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B
Hello everyone, and welcome to Amanpur. Here's what's coming up. One of the deadliest weeks in Gaza since the ceasefire began as Israeli strikes killed dozens more people there while settler seized the agenda on the occupied West Bank. We have a report and coexistence my ass. Israeli comedian Noam Shuster Eliasi uses humor to get through life amid conflict and how she actually bridges the divide between Israelis and Palestinians. Then how cuts to USAID are devastating countries like Mozambique from ferry food scarcity to the resurgence of ISIS. Also ahead, notes on how we got here 2012 to today. The dean of the Columbia Journalism School, Jelani Cobb talks to Michelle Martin about race, power and democracy in Americ. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in New York. A familiar morbid scene in Gaza again. The bodies of Palestinians on the ground in Gaza City, victims of the latest Israeli airstrikes. 32 more people have been killed, bringing the total dead Palestinians in Gaza to 312since the US brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas six weeks ago. The Israeli military says its forces struck Hamas targets across Gaza after members of the Palestinian militant group fired on its troops. Meanwhile, in the occupied west bank, violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers is rising. The UN has logged 264 attacks in October alone, its highest monthly tally as settlers go after farmers and burn olive trees. Senior Israeli officials are warning that the state is losing control there. So let's go now to Nick Robertson in Jerusalem. Nick, thanks for being there. It really does seem like there's an uptick in violence. Just when people think, whoa, you know, a cease fire has calmed the situation let's first talk about Gaza, why so many have been killed in the last six weeks, but especially this week.
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E
Yeah. The idf, as you said there, said Hamas hit first. Hamas said they didn't. A government spokesman put more detail on it today, saying that several terrorists crossed the yellow line. That's the line in Gaza that separates the IDF control part and, if you will, the Hamas, Palestinian part of the Gaza Strip. They were neutralized, according to the government spokesman. The government spokesman also said that Hamas or terrorist gunmen came across into an area where the IDF were, that they were firing their weapons and that put a danger on those IDF troops. And then the IDF took the decision. And it was interesting that the government spokesman, whatever anyone's concept about how the ceasefire might be intended to work in the future, the government spokesman said Israel did not seek anyone's permission to strike. It decided to strike. 32 people, as you say, killed. 12 of them were children, eight of them were women, 88 people injured. And perhaps this typifies the breakdown in information that is not clearly not being shared and the disparity of interpretation of what the ceasefire is about by both sides.
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B
Exactly. And it does not look right now whether all the things around the cease fire that are meant to really start a proper stabilization with the force and then governance and all the other hard, hard things, it doesn't seem they'd be in place yet, despite the UN Security Council resolution. So can you tell what the feeling is about any of these, you know, later phases?
- [04:56]
E
They seem immensely troubled right now. There is no Board of Peace working who's supposed to oversee the international stabilization force that doesn't have a commitment of troops from countries yet or detailed way that they're supposed to operate on the ground. Neither is there a Palestinian police operation been put in place as the resolution implicated. And we've heard from both Hamas and the Israeli government about the resolution. And Hamas has said, we don't want the Board of Peace because this is an international guardianship. They've said, we're not going to be disarmed. We don't want an international stabilization force running after us. They should be monitoring the ceasefire. Some Palestinians in Gaza have sort of expressed a similar sentiment about having an international force there they think they perceive as there to do Israel's bidding. And we've heard from the Israeli prime minister, from Israel's ambassador at the un, Danny Danone, saying very clearly the international stabilizing force is there to disarm Hamas. So you have a huge disparity of view. And as you rightly say nothing even there that was called into being is there exists and is realistically, you know, maybe as much as six months away, according to some diplomats I was talking to.
- [06:12]
B
Well, six months is a massive, massive vacuum in this case. Let me ask you, though, of course, you mentioned the number of children, the number of women in the latest strikes. This really does trouble a lot of people when we're told they go after just Hamas targets. And we've also talked about the number of attacks by Israeli settlers or soldiers on Palestinian farming communities in the occupied West bank. Apparently this in 2025 has surpassed any year on record since the UN started counting in 2006. So some Israeli, you know, security officials, former generals and the like, are saying it looks like the government has lost control of the agenda there for so long, they've let the settlers do what they pretty much want. So what, what are you hearing about that? Because now they're putting out statements that it's got to stop, et cetera. What is the actual, you know, hope that it will stop there?
- [07:09]
E
You know, I think there's another view of the government, and that's certainly a view shared by Palestinians in the occupied west and by Israeli activist groups that we've been talking to, that in fact the government, despite what they say is enabling this. There's been very strong language used by members of the opposition that these so called hilltop youths, these settlers, are in fact Jewish terrorists and they should be treated as such. Avi Blut, who's in charge of the IDF for the Gaza area, has actually called them anarchists. And after he did that, those settlers spray painted graffiti during one of their attacks saying, we're not afraid of the idf, not afraid of Abby Blut. So I think that's an answer back from them. One of the key things people point to is the fact that Israel Katz, the defense minister, when he came into office last year, removed administrative detention for settlers, which is a tool that's used to arrest Palestinians and keep them in jail absent of a conviction. It's not being used against settlers. And the interpretation is therefore that there is not enough restraining influence on them. I was in the west bank just yesterday, traveling around three different villages that are feeling the brunt of settler violence. And literally, I just left one of those villages. An hour later, settlers were there attacking an average of eight attacks a day. But I think the key thing that activists and Palestinians in Gaza want the international community to understand at the moment is the settlers have gone to another level, not just the scale, scope and organization, but what they're doing is they've, if you will, done with the rural areas. They're now encroaching on the towns. And the allegation is that they would have a plan to try to force all Palestinians into a couple of major cities in the West Bank.
- [08:58]
B
It's really very systematic and many are saying, you know, by not actually cracking down on it and even the US lifting sanctions on some of the worst offending settlers, it kind of gives a green light. Nick, we look forward to that report from the occupied west bank and thank you for joining us. Now, of course, there are many Israelis and Palestinians fighting tirelessly for peace, including our next guest, the Israeli comedian Noam Schuster Eliasi. She lends her unique voice to the dialogue on the hard work of making peace. And it is the focus of her new documentary. Coexistence my ass. Here's a clip.
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F
My mother is Iranian Jewish. My father is Romanian Jewish. They've been together since high school. So they basically grew up together. And they grew up to become the thing that Israelis love to hate. The woke progressive leftists. They believe in the radical idea that Israelis and Palestinians deserve the same equal human rights. Crazy. So radical. When I was seven years old, they said, let's not raise our kids to be normal Israelis. Let's move to the only place in the country where Jews and Palestinians live together by choice, like on purpose. This is where the inspiration comes from. Jews and Arabs living together, dreaming of.
- [10:35]
B
Peace, Dreaming, oh my goodness, it looks so idyllic. And Noam is joining our program from Jerusalem. I'm so happy to have you on because you really do typify. I think it's a dwindling group of people who still believe that there is a possibility of, you can define it, but peace in some form or fashion. Just tell us why your parents moved over to. I think it's called the Oasis of Peace and how you were brought up. It was a deliberate move.
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F
Yeah, it's called the Oasis of Peace in English. In Arabic it's Wahte Salam In Hebrew, it's Neveshalom. And when I type it on my iPhone, it autocorrected to nev eshalom. So I like to say that I grew up in Nevre Shalom. I grew up in a very political household. My parents made a decision when I was 7 years old to move to the only place where Jews and Palestinians live together by choice. And I think for them it was a way to demonstrate what they believe is the alternative. So I grew up as the literal poster child. Of the peace movement. But I also grew up to. Which is what we are dealing with in this film. Coexistence my ass. And why I called my show coexistence my asses because I wanted to face some harsh realities when it comes to the term coexistence and peace, which is thrown and used without, you know, stopping and thinking what does it really mean? How can Israelis and Palestinians coexist when we are denying the existence of Palestinians and when Palestinians are living under occupation and this ongoing genocide in Gaza? And I wanted to put on the screen and in the show and through this film these crucial questions about coexistence and what real coexistence means.
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B
So the documentary is super interesting and it does start with you at Harvard developing a stand up comedy routine that's, you know, skewering the ideas that you're talking about right now. You talk about denying the existence some on the other side, deny the existence of Israel, of Jews as well. What conclusion have you come to or not yet? Because you grew up thinking, thinking that it was possible. And clearly so much has happened since then. Is it gone from your table or do you have another route towards coming back to that idea of peace between all sides?
- [13:05]
F
I think that if we face the harsh questions and if we face the elephants in the room, then there could be a reckoning and there could be a path forward to for the future. I would not be doing comedy and I would not be going on stages and I would not be, you know, doing this interview with you if I didn't believe that there is hope. I'm also speaking to you seven months pregnant. And I think of this also as somewhat of an act of hope of, you know, me becoming a mother. But I think that me being an Israeli Jew, I carry a responsibility. What do I do with my voice? What do I do with my jokes? What do I do with my responsibility towards my Palestinian friends, towards the Palestinians that I grew up with everywhere? And I think that we can't just throw the words peace and coexistence. Peace and coexistence will be a side effect when there will be justice, when we will be able to stop the occupation, when we will be able to. To hold Israel accountable for the war crimes and everything that it's been doing for decades. There is a lot of dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society and very much widespread. And I feel like I'm carrying the responsibility to, you know, to talk about it because I'm looking at my society going more and more and more to the extreme. And so I feel like I'm caring and this responsibility, it is obviously something.
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B
That I can see weighs heavily on you. I want to get back to the comedy part of all of this and we're going to because it's important, because even that is altered given post October 7th, given your particular view. So I'm just going to play a snippet from the doc where you recently performed in front of Palestinian audiences, even took the stage at the Palestine Comedy Festival in Sheikh Jarrah in front of a Palestinian crowd living the daily realities that you talk about. Here's a clip that we're going to be playing.
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One of our comedians tonight is one.
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Of our Jewish brothers and sisters.
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C
Please help me welcome to the stage Noam Schuster.
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B
Eliase.
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F
I'm only staying for seven minutes, not 70 years. By the way, this is Amer's joke.
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B
I stole it.
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F
It's mine now. God promised it to me.
- [15:49]
B
Do you know, it's actually really amazing. I assume that was a while ago because you said 70 years. I think we're now at 75 or 80 years. Since the Nakba, as they say, was in 2018. Exactly. Yeah. Well, there you go. And you see Palestinians laughing at their plight, you know, through your comedy. That is not going to happen today. Right. I mean, you talk about, or maybe it will, but I understand that you're having more difficulty getting bookings there. Isn't that sort of, you know, eagerness certainly amongst Israelis to go and listen to that kind of humor? Maybe not amongst Palestinians either. What is the situation now for you?
- [16:29]
F
Well, first of all, you know, I'm really wondering how to answer these questions because there is no definite answer. People are eager for connection, people are eager for empathy. I think what comedy has brought me, it has brought me the great gift of being able to uncensor myself, to use this amazing tool to, as you saw now on stage, I didn't have to accept, explain myself. It was obvious. And this is the wonders of what comedy can do. But I am very, very sensitive to what is happening. A stage like this cannot happen today because I am seeing the reality around me. In that same neighborhood where I'm performing actively, Israeli settlers are taking over Palestinian homes and it's an ongoing process of ethnic cleansing. So I'm very mindful that what I am doing, it's comedy, but it's also a very active, outspoken thing that I'm doing to make present something that most comedians, you know, how many times Christian comedians told me, oh, here is the comedian who is like doing the heavy stuff she's doing, you know, the Arabs, the Jews, the coexistence, the Palestine, the this, the that. And I was kind of stubborn on continuing to do that. And I think since October 2023, I've also had a real heartbreak with this craft because also in the US and also here, we are seeing comedians using the tool of comedy for propaganda, using the tool of comedy that is supposed to shine light on power dynamics and to expose the power and to challenge it. We are seeing comedian using their podcast and using their stage to entertain war, to become part of a war machine, to entertain propaganda to help Trump get elected through their comedy podcasts. I mean, I think it's a.
- [18:27]
E
I.
- [18:28]
F
Think I had a little bit of a heartbreak with it, but it also really reinforced my role and that I don't have to choose all the time. You know, I still have shows here. Palestinians and Jews come to my shows. This film, Coexistence Mass, which is based on my show, is being watched. You know, we've had 65 festivals around the world. We're about to have a premiere in my hometown where, you know, the Palestinian mothers and teachers who have been carrying so much, you know, pain for the past two years are going to come, and I can't wait to see them watch the film and, you know, be proud and laugh and cry. And so I think that it has just made my role, like, just more clear and the fact that I am not going to stop, you know, not on the activism and not on the comedy.
- [19:23]
B
Yeah, well, I was gonna say I can see you emotional. I can see you really clear that you want to continue your art and your activism. And to that point, I want to play a clip because in the, you know, documentary, it's not just about comedy. It's also you confronting, you know, anti peace processors or whatever you want to call them there. It was this one, an anti Netanyahu demonstration. You confronted protesters who were demanding democracy without ever addressing the issue of Palestinian rights or the occupation. So here you are. I'm going to. I'm going to play this. So, Noam, you know, you're there and you're actually, you know, sort of shaking your hand and having this argument with somebody who's on the same side essentially looking for democracy. It was an anti, you know, the interference with the Supreme Court and all the rest of it, protest. And even they, you find, don't get the whole story. So just very briefly, because we're running out of town, what is your hope for the future?
- [20:58]
F
My hope for the future is that the very basic things we are saying in this film and the basic things I stand for don't seem radical even in a left wing demonstration, as you are saying, very rightfully. Demanding full and equal rights to Palestinians is not radical. Wanting ethnic cleansing to stop is not radical. Wanting the genocide to stop is not radical. What I am representing is a very strong, simple truth of equality and hopefully people will also laugh on the way.
- [21:29]
B
Well, we certainly need some kind of hope out of all of this darkness. And good luck with your baby and everything. Thank you. Noam Schuster Eliasi, thank you very much for joining us.
- [21:41]
F
Thank you so much for having me.
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B
And stay with us because we'll be back after the break.
- [21:50]
G
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More than 22 million people, many of them children, could die from preventable causes by 2030 due to aid cuts by the United States and European countries, too. That's according to a group of respected global health organizations. In particular, the void left by USAID is being felt in countries like Mozambique, where food and medicine are increasingly difficult to find. Meanwhile, ISIS is staging a resurgence in the north of Mozambique, sweeping into small villages, carrying out beheadings and expelling people from their homes. Nick Peyton Walsh is there with this report.
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D
The little holding ISIS back as it surges, making swathes of Africa a new heartland, is fading darkness in its place. Help from the American people so vital In Mozambique, about 3% of its economy, and in January it was suddenly gone. The hole it left seems to suck. Everyone in and open space for ISIS to surge in the north. Beheadings, child abductions, emptying Christian neighbourhoods. Nearly 100,000 on the move, finding little food or help. Where they flee to. In a place where billions in lng gas, wealth enough to transform life here and an American investment sits untapped until security returns, it looks like a place where nothing should go wrong. But Mozambique's north is ravaged by a resurgent ISIS finding a new life across Africa. We land in the flashpoint of Massimba, the Praya, seven weeks after ISIS started their worst offensive since they occupied the town in 2021 with the first international journalists here in a year. The government's grip is so shaky, they've let Rwandan forces in to be the real muscle on streets where ISIS seemed to rule the night. So USAID's contribution to Mozambique amounted to about 3% of its GDP. And so obviously they're reeling from that suddenly stopping. And a place like this, well, it was controlled briefly by isis. About four years ago they were kicked out. And that US aid money helped the economy here, development, schools really enabled the government to try and promote its hold on the place. And so now that money's suddenly vanished, well, they're reeling here and ISIS are back. The little video we have of ISIS's recent onslaught is terrifying. Outgunning Mozambican forces, slaughtering captives. But in October they tried something new, less savage and confident. They walked unopposed, armed, in stolen uniforms, straight into this mosque in Massimba's coastal fishing community to deliver a manifesto. The crowd didn't flee, but instead filmed when ISIS arrived, asked for the keys and walked in wearing their boots. The imam had presumed they were soldiers. What did you think on that night when these guys came in? It is extraordinary after all these years of ISIS has spread across the Middle east to stand in Staling, to stand in in a place where they had freedom of movement. Just a couple of days ago. Locals say they alerted the military, but ISIS had made their point about control. 93,000 people around this area fled in just six weeks after ISIS's attacks began on September 7th. Not a breath or noise of life here in a Christian neighborhood. Felipe Nusi emptied with the first journalist to see this. Rafael takes us directly to the home of his brother in law, now abandoned. They were not rich and also took US aid. But ISIS still came for their money in the dark, knowing exactly which door to knock on. Eight men killed by isis, seven of them beheaded, some in front of their families. And you just for looking around, I mean there's nobody here. It's startling. This used to be a vibrant area, Christian area. Can sense just how much fear ISIS are able to project with these night raids when they just turn up in the dark, hit particular houses and behead the men. USAID gave about $586 million in 2024 to Mozambique. A total of about 2.4 billion was intended for ongoing projects from water sanitation to anti extremism. According to documents seen by CNN. When USAID stopped, roughly $800 million of that probably did too. The money USAID spent here urgently tried to curb the spread of ISIS. They gave $50,000 here to help motorcycle taxi drivers improve their working conditions with paperwork, vests, helmets. Young and poor, they risk recruitment to ISIS unless they find a livelihood. Their anger about that help suddenly disappearing and then us asking questions. Clear now. Please, my friend, tell me, how do you feel now the USAID money has stopped. Emotion's incredibly high here. I mean, it's all about people's livelihoods really, and a lot of anger. The man who ran the project describes.
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A
How it is the only way to stop isiski. Tentacora sound.
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D
Fishermen, the main workforce here, but also a source of ISIS recruits. We visit a USAID project aimed too at giving them a better livelihood. Now shut. It's absolutely stunning here. But just on the other side of that bay over there is the mosque where ISIS gave their speech a matter of days ago. And here's the project, funded discreetly by $70,000 from USAID through local government. It helped register and repair boats, nets and motors and was meant to. Interrupting. ISIS is personal to Kadumo. Over six years ago they abducted both his sons and daughter. She escaped, but he doesn't know if his boys are alive.
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F
So it's doing.
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D
I mean, it's just crazy how frequently we come across stories of abduction, killing. The town so many flee to. Moeda is a back breaking nine hours drive away. The shorter roads we avoid. ISIS killed police there days earlier. Well, this really is an aid town. But we're told that like since USAID shut down, 10 international aid workers have left here, leaving not that many. Many offices have been closed. Real sense of the air kind of being sucked out of here. 10,000 new arrivals in this camp alone met with a steep drop in food aid. The Norwegian Refugee Council, half funded by usaid, can now only provide a month's stop gap rations. They build again here, new homes from bamboo and netting. All vividly aware they cannot go back. Most stories you hear in the heat, dust and smoke end in A beheading. Already there are signs of real hunger. You might choose to eat these snails fresh from the sea, but not like this, so far inland. Is Girl's father was killed by isis. He was part of a local government militia. They arrived here desperate two days ago to find the aid they yearned for wasn't there. The UN say they need $352 million in aid for this crisis hit region in the north, but as of October have a fifth only $3.5 million from the US so far, although more from the State Department is said to be coming. The US gave much more in previous years.
- [34:55]
C
We're assisting about 1 million people at the beginning of 2024, and then we decreased to around 345,000 people that we are targeting now.
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B
It is limited funding and we see.
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F
Now that we cannot help them and it's very stressful.
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A
We have to address the priority of.
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E
The priority, which means we have to.
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A
Make very tough choices.
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E
And this means we focus on life saving.
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D
But Mozambique could be rich. Around the town of Parma, shielded by these fortifications, it's clear that while the Trump administration is stripping away aid here, it's also investing fast and hard. A $4.7 billion loan in March in vast liquid natural gas facilities. US giant Exxon Mobil and France's Total Energy plan to spend at least $20 billion here. This one. So much of that intensity is all about Mozambique's liquid natural gas resources, so plentiful yet untapped. But it could make the country second only to Qatar in terms of the wealth they get from it is a contradiction and too a risk. ISIS violence paused building here for years, but even though it is now worsening, Total Energy suggested last month they would push ahead with the build. Yet with this remarkable savagery swirling around it, a future of gulf like prosperity seems far fetched. Surrounded by a crisis of escalating hunger, displacement and extremism deepened by a sudden collapse in the aid that once kept life afloat here. A State Department spokesperson said the US had continued to provide assistance this year in Mozambique, a majority of which was life saving, food and nutrition assistance. They added that worldwide aid was constantly under review to ensure it meets the needs of the receiving country and the priorities of the United States. The State Department did not respond to our questions about the resurgence of ISIS following the withdrawal of usaid. Their statement, the United States continues to be the most generous nation in the world. This administration is significantly enhancing the efficiency and strategic impact of foreign assistance programs around the world. We call on other nations to increase in burden sharing globally. Nick Payton Walsh, cnn, Massimba Depraya, Mozambique.
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B
We'll be right back after this break.
- [37:26]
G
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Now, from mass ice raids across immigrant communities to enforcing anti DEI policies, fears mount for the melting pot society that the US Once championed, slowly unraveling under President Trump. At this moment of social and political upheaval, the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, Jelani Cobb, told his own students back in March that, quote, nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times. Now, through a collection of his articles written over the last decade, he reflects with Michelle Martin on how the United States got to this place.
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C
Thanks, Christiane. Jelani Cobb, thank you so much for talking with us. Once again, thank you.
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A
I'm happy to be here.
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C
So your new book is a collection of your essays. They span from 2012 to 2025. It's titled three or more is a Riot. Where does the title come from?
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A
I'd done a lot of coverage that was in and around South Carolina, particularly one very difficult story that I covered, which was the deaths of nine African Americans at the Emanuel AME Church in 2015, the result of a mass shooting that had been orchestrated by a white supremacist. And it reminded me that there had been years before the civil code of South Carolina, colonial South Carolina, had held that a slave revolt was defined as three or more Negroes, as black people would have been called then, outside the company of a white man. And then, interestingly enough, a lot of civil codes, their definition of riot is public mayhem committed by three or more people. And I thought that there were this line about numbers, demography, you know, social tensions, order, and all those themes that kept coming up and the Things I wrote about. And so the title just kind of jumped out at me. It was Three or More is a Riot.
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C
You start by talking about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. For many people who may not remember this, he was a Florida teenager. He was shot by a white Hispanic man named George Zimmerman back in 2012, who was sort of a self appointed neighborhood watchman. Trayvon was visiting his dad. He went out to get his little brother a snack at the convenience store. Zimmerman decided that he was suspicious he was going to follow him. Treva doesn't like being followed, and he feels like he feels threatened. So he confronts Zimmerman. Zimmerman shoots him. He's not arrested for weeks. Public outcry ensues. He's finally arrested, and eventually he's acquitted. And that wholethe irony, of course, that it takes place during the Obama administration. Right, right. And the book kind of follows these sort of different sections. It's got the parameters of hope, Winter in America, and history lessons. I was curious, like, why you decided to open the book with the Trayvon essay as opposed to, for example, the election of Barack Obama in 2008.
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A
So here's the interesting thing. There were a couple reasons why the book opens where it does. And, you know, I started writing for the New Yorker in 2012. The first thing I ever wrote about was Trayvon. But at that time, it was a kind of a news blip. It wasn't a story that had the dimensions that it eventually came to occupy. And so it was the beginning of my relationship with the New Yorker. It was the first thing that I had written about. And then also it occurred to me that when we were putting the collection together, that if we looked at 2012 to 2016, the second term of Barack Obama, then 2016 to 2020, and then 2020 to 2024, it's just a little bit that creeps over into 2025. It could be like a three act play, really, with the three presidential administrations. You can kind of see an arc of the story evolving and how we came to find ourselves in increasingly volatile social and political circumstances.
- [42:47]
C
One of the things you write about is the way in which the President Trump has been very good at turning racial grievances, cultural grievances, class grievances into political capital. Okay, but why do you think that is, that he's been so successful at it?
- [43:03]
A
I mean, I think some of this is a particular political skill, and I mean, dare I say, even talent at finding the buttons that really trigger rage in people. And, you know, he has a background in television, which shows, you know, in reality tv. And, you know, some ways, the kind of politic that we've seen him deploy has been the fundamental, with the kind of simplicity level of reality television. And that has been compelling to people. The other thing is that this is a very old playbook. Populist movements, particularly reactionary populist movements. If you go back to Pat BUCHANAN in the 90s or George Wallace in the 1960s, or if you went all the way back to Tom Watson in the 1890s into the early 20th century, and if you took all their speeches and threw the pages up in the air and let them hit the ground, you would have a hard time discerning who was saying what, because there is this big overlap in the kind of ways in which they leverage people's feelings of resentment and galvanize that into political.
- [44:27]
C
Yeah, but Pat Buchanan didn't make it to the White House. George Wallace didn't make it to the White House. Certainly not for two terms. I mean, not for no terms in their case, and certainly not for two terms. It's just. I don't know, I mean, to kind of be defeated, to win an election, be defeated and then to come back, that's a pretty remarkable achievement.
- [44:46]
A
Yeah, I'm not doubting that at all. And so that's the thing that I'm saying, though. Like, those kinds of movements have existed for a long time. The dynamic of someone who's able to galvanize that also, I should say, none of those people were running for president in the aftermath of a black man being elected president, which is another kind of point that bears mention.
- [45:16]
C
The book is not exclusively, but it is very much focused on kind of the black, white, racial dynamic, in part because of the times that you were writing about. I mean, an African American president in his second term, a white populist figure, arising in part, as you noted, out of a resentment around that fact. Okay, so in the current moment, though, many of the people who seem to be the focus of this president's resentment are people of other ethnic backgrounds, many people from South America, Central America, many of the people who are the first targets of this immigration crackdown, which has taken on these kind of furious dimension. And I was just wondering if that kind of how that. How you're thinking about that.
- [46:07]
A
So I think it's interesting. There's a piece that I wrote in the New Yorker, but was too recent to actually get into the collection, and there's a couple of other pieces that talk about, you know, this dynamic of immigration and anti immigration, you know xenophobia in American society and the kind of high groundswell of it that we're experiencing right now. But one of the things that I would point out that historically we have seen, we've tended to see xenophobic politics rise at the same time that we have seen anti black politics. Like those two things seem to have had like a connection that goes to a fundamental concern about demography and trying to curate who is in the United States and therefore who is in the electorate. There are issues of voter access and voter suppression that also tend to go hand in hand with anti immigration rhetoric, with nativism and xenophobia. And so all of these things I think are responding to a common sense of persecution or maybe anxiety about where people fit into the bigger demography of the United States.
- [47:31]
C
In some of your essays you revisit them like you have like an epilogue or a postscript where you kind of reflect on what you wrote then and what you might think now. Anyone in particular where you really felt like, I kind of got that wrong? I was really wrong?
- [47:48]
A
No, I feel like I got everything right.
- [47:52]
C
Lucky?
- [47:54]
A
No, I think some of my assessments, my early assessments about the MAGA phenomenon underestimated one, the broad array of issues that were really kind of buoying that movement. I certainly underestimated the speed at which it was going to come into fruition. And once I started to see it, I couldn't unsee it. And I was thinking about it in relationship to older populist movements in the United States. And then it becomes much more legible, much more understandable. But I think early on I didn't understand that. And so the writing that I did probably reflected that then.
- [48:43]
C
What do you make of the fact that this.
- [48:45]
A
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- [49:05]
G
Yeah.
- [49:05]
A
Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch upfront payment.
- [49:09]
G
Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra. C mint mobile.com I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, the biggest news in the sort of AI generated content space in the last few Weeks has been OpenAI launching its AI video app Sora. What does it mean for all of us when more of our feeds are filled with artificial content and how can we distinguish between what's real and what's fake? To help us sort this out, I have Henry Eider here with me. Henry is an expert on AI and deepfakes. He's the co creator of the University of Cambridge's AI in Business program.
- [49:49]
A
The amount of tools out there is endless. Now there are teams of hundreds of people working on this, trying to get on top of it, and I don't.
- [49:55]
G
Think anyone truly can listen to CNN's Terms of Service wherever you get your podcasts.
- [50:02]
C
MAGA movement, this movement that, that, you know, the president has called maga, is a multiracial movement. His FBI director, who has been a prime agent of his, you know, revenge campaign against his perceived political enemies, is an Indian American who took his oath of office on a Hindu sacred text. What do you make of the fact that the head of one of these kind of militia groups, like the Proud Boys, has a Hispanic heritage? The fact that he got larger percentages of Hispanic and black votes in his second election than he did in the first?
- [50:36]
A
Sure.
- [50:36]
C
What do you make of that?
- [50:37]
A
So I think there are a few things that are at play. One is that if we looked at all sorts of movements that preceded this, if we looked at the kind of anti communist movements of the 1950s and so on, you have people of different backgrounds and different kind of vantage points who also found something that they connected to in those movements. The other thing that I will say that has happened here is that the politics of othering has been kind of like playing off of various counterpoints. If I can say it. The person who, for the large numbers of black men or the larger numbers of black men who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 were very often responding to the kind of masculinist and some people thought were sexist politics that Trump represented. And so they weren't voting necessarily on the basis of race, but they were voting about anxieties and resentments that they experienced along the lines of gender. There were people who were women who could have been concerned about the questions about policies that he would have advocated that weren't beneficial to women, but also were more concerned about immigration and ideas that. And so it was a kind of masterful example of playing people off of each other on the basis of their resentments, their anxieties and their fears. That's one thing. The other thing is that some of this is not about the increased appeal appeal of Donald Trump. It's about the decreased appeal of the Democratic Party, which has two huge issues, the extent to which we haven't really sorted in terms of how they factored in to the previous presidential election. But the first was that lots of young voters who were turned off by Gaza simply didn't come out. And so Trump's proportion of these voters increases because the anticipated turnout on the other side is lower than what had been suspected. And then the other side of it was that when Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, there were significant numbers of Democrats who felt that he should not have been able to just hand the nomination to Kamala Harris, as if he were passing a torch. And those kinds of resentments and anxieties led people to be, you know, her campaign kind of suffered the brunt of that as well. Not to mention, you know, the fact that this was a campaign for somebody that had 107 days, I think it was to make a case to the entire 340 million plus population of the United States about why they should be the next leader. I think when you look at it like that, it's probably some combination of all those things and not simply one group of people decided that Donald Trump was more appealing in 2024 than he had been in 2020 or 2016.
- [54:02]
C
So before we let you go, let's go back to kind of where we started. One of the places we started, which is that you've got several hats, but the journalist hat, the historian hat. Did the experience of going back and looking at your writings from 2012 on, has that changed anything about the way you look at the current moment?
- [54:21]
A
Yeah, it has, actually, because, you know, one going back and reading the pieces and I write these assessments, you know, that look at, you know, how what I got right, what I got wrong, this is my own assessment. But the other part of it was that it made the patterns that we kind of see that weren't as visible at the time much more legible and visible to me on the other side of it in retrospect. And so that was also something I think I took from going through all of it and going like, oh, wow, this is connected to this and this is connected to that, and these things go together and so on.
- [55:04]
C
Jelani Cobb, thank you so much for talking with us.
- [55:07]
A
Thank you.
- [55:09]
B
And finally, some well earned recognition for another journalist documenting the patterns of Omar El Akkad, an American author born in Egypt, won the National Book Award for nonfiction for one day everyone will have always been against this. An indictment of the global response to the war in Gaza. When I spoke with El Akkad in March, I asked him if writing the book felt cathartic. He said the short answer is no.
- [55:38]
C
I don't know if this book is worth a damn. I don't know if it's going to change anything. I can't tell you that about my own work. But I can tell you that had I not written it, I don't think I would have been able to live with myself. I certainly wouldn't have been able to.
- [55:54]
E
Call myself a writer.
- [55:56]
B
The National Book Award is among the most prestigious in American literature, but speaking at last night's ceremony, El Akkad said, it's very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide. That is it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always catch us online, on our website and all over social media. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.