Democracy Now! 2026-05-11 Monday

Summary

Democracy Now! – May 11, 2026 Episode Summary

Overview

This episode of Democracy Now! (May 11, 2026) covers seismic political shifts in the UK with the rise of the far-right Reform UK Party, ongoing crises relating to US, Israeli, and Iranian military conflict, the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism, and censorship controversies involving university commencements. Key segments feature an in-depth analysis of UK politics with journalist Daniel Trilling, a firsthand protestor account from Guido Reichstadter on the intersections of AI and antiwar activism, and biotech entrepreneur Rami Elgandor’s experience of speech cancellation at Rutgers University over his pro-Palestinian views.

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Headlines and Major Developments

1. Iran, Israel, and US Conflict – Humanitarian & Military Toll

• Amy Goodman outlines the devastating impact of US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran:
  • Over 1 million jobs lost in Iran; 3,600 civilians (including 254 children) killed by US-Israeli strikes [03:16], [02:53].
  • Iran rejects US ceasefire proposal [02:24]; US calls Iran's response "totally unacceptable".
  • Israeli PM Netanyahu: war "not over" due to Iran's nuclear material and proxies [03:50].
• Israeli attacks continue in Lebanon and Gaza despite "ceasefire" [05:24], [06:26]. The displaced, including children, are killed in ongoing strikes.

Notable Quote:

"It's not over because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran..."
—Benjamin Netanyahu [03:50]

2. UK Political Earthquake: Rise of Reform UK Party

• Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, surges in local elections, gaining 1,450 council seats while Labour loses nearly 1,500 [10:18].
• Farage claims the party is breaking down left/right distinctions by winning both conservative and Labour strongholds [00:18], [17:53].
• Calls intensify for PM Keir Starmer to resign; Conservatives and Labour both suffer historic losses; the Green Party makes notable gains [10:37], [17:39].

Notable Quote:

"We've been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right, and yet what reform are able to do is to win in areas that are always been conservative...equally we're proving in a big way we can win in areas that Labour have dominated frankly since the end of World War I."
—Nigel Farage [00:18], [17:53]

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In-Depth Interview: UK Politics and the Far-Right (w/ Daniel Trilling)

[19:46-33:44] Daniel Trilling (author, If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable)

Key Points:

• Labour’s Defeat: Described as a “real disaster,” particularly notable in Wales, with Labour now trailing behind Plaid Cymru and Reform [19:46].
• Farage’s Narrative: Trilling challenges Farage’s spin, arguing Reform’s “historic” gains are limited in scope, mainly leveraging multi-party fragmentation and Brexit-era divisions; they didn’t "erase" left/right boundaries and underperformed in some traditional strongholds [19:46-21:47].
• Mainstreaming Far-Right Rhetoric:
  • Farage and Reform UK are packaging longstanding anti-immigration, anti-elite sentiments into electoral power. The party seeks to build a political base on punitive immigration policies, such as creating a "British ICE" [22:03-24:19].
  • Farage’s campaign video emphasizes mass detention and deportation, particularly targeting “illegal immigrants” and tying detention centers to constituencies’ electoral choices [24:24].

Notable Quotes:

"Reform have benefited...from this wider fragmenting of politics. We now have kind of four, five or even six party politics in the UK."
—Daniel Trilling [20:30]

"They make a real point of trying to...show how ostentatiously cruel they're going to be to what they call illegal immigrants, which is a wide range of people living in the UK."
—Daniel Trilling [23:30]

• Authoritarian Creep: Trilling critiques Labour PM Starmer for appeasing right-wing narratives, e.g. banning pro-Palestinian group Palestine Action as a terrorist org, which results in mass arrests of protesters [26:39].
• Green Party Surge: Eco-populism, worker solidarity, and social justice drive Green gains—setting up “new politics” as a contest between Reform and Greens [28:46-29:32].
• Hungary’s Lessons: Trilling draws parallels to Hungary’s recent ousting of far-right Victor Orbán, emphasizing the difficulty of removing far-right populists once entrenched—calling for opposition coalitions to prevent democratic erosion [32:01].

Notable Quotes:

"Punishing people for voting the wrong way and perhaps even trying to scare voters into not opposing him." —Daniel Trilling on Farage's campaign tactics [25:11]

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Protest and Dissent: Guido Reichstadter’s Bridge Action

[35:22-45:12] Guido Reichstadter (Marine veteran, Stop AI co-founder)

Key Points:

• Protest Overview: Reichstadter spent five nights atop the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in DC to protest the US-Israeli war on Iran and warn of the existential threat of unregulated artificial intelligence [35:22], [37:19].
• Motivations: Driven by conscience and his background—former evangelical, ex-Marine, refused Iraq deployment in 2003—he feels moral duty to resist both militarism and technological peril [41:58].
• AI Risks: AI’s rapid progress poses catastrophe including loss of control and societal surveillance, raising risk of authoritarianism. Calls for global coordination beyond dialogue—“we need to treat it like an emergency” [40:25].
• Protest Success: Considers his action a success if it galvanizes even a few people; willing to face legal consequences for doing what he believes is right [43:24].
• Linking AI and Militarism: AI was used for targeting in recent strikes against Iran ("Operation Epic Fury"), and is being developed for both war-making and societal control—a trend likely to destroy democracy without intervention [45:12].

Notable Quotes:

"One man on a bridge is relatively powerless. But the collective withdrawal of our obedience and support is capable of bringing a swift end to the regime and its wars. This nonviolent collective action is our greatest power."
—Guido Reichstadter, quoting his protest statement [35:22]

"If we care about the people we love and the society we live in and our children and their future, we've got to make sacrifices and do what's necessary, even if it's uncomfortable."
—Guido Reichstadter [45:12]

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Censorship & Free Speech: Rutgers University Cancels Speech

[48:03-58:44] Rami Elgandor (Biotech entrepreneur, Rutgers alumnus)

Background:

• Elgandor was disinvited from delivering the School of Engineering’s commencement address at Rutgers over alleged student objections to his pro-Palestinian social media posts. Educator unions condemned the cancellation as "politically motivated suppression" [48:03].

Key Points:

• Lack of Due Process: Elgandor was given no specifics about the offending posts; objections cited from "a few" students out of a thousand [49:51].
• Rutgers’ Double Standard: Contrasts his exclusion with Rutgers permitting a speech from an Israeli soldier, despite a petition with 7,000 signatures to cancel it—a "false equivalency" in treatment and free speech [52:28].
• Main Canceled Message: His intended address was to inspire authenticity and kindness, focusing on success without sacrificing values [54:20].
• Chilling Effect: Elgandor highlights that real harm is in censorship, not disagreement, and denounces the tendency to silence Palestinian voices on campus [49:51], [57:06].
• US Support for Israel: Criticizes relentless funding and political cover while noting pro-Palestinian advocacy never requests US money [52:28].
• Allegations of Israeli Prison Abuse: Elgandor affirms a widely circulated but officially denied report of sexual assault of Palestinian detainees by dogs, as covered by Nicholas Kristof—condemning focus on the tweet's tone instead of the documented abuses [57:06].

Notable Quotes:

"Having a moral conscience is a liability."
—Rami Elgandor [02:01]

"Disagreement is not harm. Having a different point of view is not harming these students in any way to lead to this sort of outcome."
—Rami Elgandor [49:51]

"How morally bankrupt can you be to read that tweet and have your concern be the content of the tweet rather than the accusations in it?"
—Rami Elgandor [57:06]

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Other Noteworthy Segments

• Nargis Mohamedi: Iranian Nobel laureate, critically ill in prison, symbolizing systemic "slow death" by denial of care [04:15].
• Documentary Censorship: "Doctors Under Attack" wins BAFTA despite BBC pulling it for supposed partiality [08:49].
• US Supreme Court & Voting Rights: Recent rulings gut Voting Rights Act; redistricting wars continue across US states [11:05].
• Extrajudicial Killings: Pentagon killing operations in Caribbean/Pacific with no judicial process—legal experts say illegal under US/international law [13:05].
• Hungary: Peter Magyar replaces Viktor Orbán after 16 years; seen as a hopeful sign of pushing back far-right populism [31:29].

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Timeline / Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment/Topic | Guests/Key Figures | |---------|----------------------------------------------------|------------------------------| | 00:18 | Nigel Farage on Reform UK party success | Farage | | 03:50 | Netanyahu on Iran war not being over | Netanyahu | | 06:11 | Funeral for Lebanese family killed by Israel | Abusala | | 07:57 | Gaza flotilla activist on torture/prisoners | Saif Abu Keshek | | 10:05 | UK election results summary | Goodman | | 17:53 | Farage: "Historic shift" in UK politics | Farage | | 18:26 | Keir Starmer on Labour’s losses | Starmer | | 19:46 | Daniel Trilling analysis | Trilling | | 24:24 | Farage campaign ad | Farage | | 28:46 | Zach Polanski, Green Party leader | Polanski | | 31:29 | Hungary's Peter Magyar — defeat of Orban | Trilling | | 35:22 | Guido Reichstadter explains bridge protest | Reichstadter | | 40:17 | AI & war: links and dangers | Reichstadter | | 48:03 | Rami Elgandor speech canceled at Rutgers | Elgandor | | 54:20 | What Elgandor intended to say in speech | Elgandor | | 57:06 | On reports of abuse in Israeli prisons | Elgandor |

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Memorable Quotes

• "[Reform] have managed to concentrate that vote in areas where they were able to win lots of seats...but this suggestion that Reform have completely erased the distinction between left and right, I don't think is true."
  —Daniel Trilling [20:30]

• "If governments of the center start passing their own draconian authoritarian policies...that has alienated huge amounts of their core support."
  —Daniel Trilling [26:39]

• "Choosing to do what's right and accepting the consequences...that's the pivotal thing. That's the pivotal decision that everyone has to make."
  —Guido Reichstadter [43:24]

• "They said they never even reviewed my social media...Now after drawing a lot of fire, they decided to point to something."
  —Rami Elgandor [57:06]

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Thematic Summary

This episode tackles urgent global questions: the normalization and mainstreaming of far-right rhetoric and policy in the UK and elsewhere, the erosion of civil liberties and free speech in the context of the Palestinian crisis, the clash between individual conscience and institutional power, and the deadly intertwining of advanced technology with militarism and authoritarianism. Through powerful interviews and hard-hitting reportage, Democracy Now! exposes the interconnected roots of these crises, giving a voice to those challenging the status quo and witnessing, in real time, the fragility of democracy.

Transcript

[Amy Goodman]

From New York. This is democracy now.

[Nigel Farage]

But I think overall what's happened is a truly historic shift in British politics. We've been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right, and yet what reform are able to do is to win in areas that are always been conservative. But equally we're proving in a big way we can win in areas that Labour have dominated frankly since the end of World War I.

[Amy Goodman]

In what's being described as a political earthquake in Britain, the far right Reform UK Party has surged in popularity in local elections as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces calls to resign. We'll talk with the British journalist Daniel Trilling, author of the new book if We Tolerate this How the British Establishment Made the far Right Respectable. Then we go to Washington D.C. to speak with the Marine veteran and activist who spent five days atop a bridge in a protest that made international headlines.

[Guido Reichstadter]

I climbed the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge last week to call the people of my country into action, into nonviolent action to stop the war on Iran and remove the Trump regime from power.

[Amy Goodman]

And then to the prominent biotech entrepreneur Rami Elgandor. He'd been selected by Rutgers University to address this year's graduating class of engineering students. But then the school canceled his speech over his social media posts on Israel and Palestine.

[Rami Elgandor]

The cancellation of my speech sets a dangerous precedent by sending a message that having a moral conscience is a liability.

[Amy Goodman]

All that and more coming up. Welcome to democracy now, democracynow.org, the war and Peace Report.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

I'm Amy Goodman. President Trump blasted Iran's response to the

[Amy Goodman]

U.S. s 14 point ceasefire proposal, calling it, quote, totally unacceptable.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Iran's Foreign Ministry says the US Continues

[Amy Goodman]

to have, quote, unreasonable demands, unquote, and that Iran's response to the U.S. proposal, quote, was not excessive, unquote. This comes as Iran's economy is reeling

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

from the impact of U. S. Israeli strikes.

[Amy Goodman]

An Iranian government official estimated the war has caused the loss of 1 million

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

jobs in comments reported by Iranian state media.

[Amy Goodman]

On April 25, an Iranian jobs search platform reported a record 318,000 resumes submitted in a single day, which is 50%

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

higher than the previous record, according to the news site ASR Iran cited by the New York Times. According to the U S Based Human

[Amy Goodman]

Rights Activist News Agency, over 3,600 people have been killed in Iran by U. S Israeli strikes, among them 254 children. Meanwhile, the Pentagon confirms 13 US service members have been killed and 415 wounded

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

in the U S Israeli war in Iran.

[Amy Goodman]

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted in an interview with CBS News 60 Minutes that the Iran war isn't over because nuclear material remains in Iran.

[Benjamin Netanyahu]

It's not over because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran. There is still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Now we've degraded a lot of it, but all of that is still there and there's work to be done.

[Amy Goodman]

Nobel Peace Laureate Nargis Mohamedi has been transferred to a hospital in Tehran more than a week after collapsing in prison. In a statement, her foundation said, quote, we must ensure she never returns to prison to face the 18 years remaining on her sentence. Now is the time to demand her unconditional freedom and the dismissal of all charges, unquote. Over the weekend, the Guardian published an excerpt of her memoir, Smuggled out of Prison, in which Mohammadi wrote, quote, authoritarian regimes do not always need an executioner's rope. Sometimes they simply wait for the human body to fail and and then make sure no help arrives or they create conditions in which death can come easily, helping it along by standing in the way of life saving care, unquote. Mohammadi has been arrested 13 times, sentenced to a cumulative 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for her advocacy against torture and the death penalty. And in Iran, the US says it

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

will facilitate a new round of talks between Israel and Lebanon at the State Department's Washington headquarters Thursday and Friday. Israel and Lebanon reached a temporary cease fire agreement in mid April, but Israel continues to launch deadly attacks inside Lebanon. The Lebanese Health Ministry said Sunday Israeli attacks over just 24 hours killed 51 people, including two medical workers. Since March 2, Israeli strikes have killed nearly 3,000 people. Across Lebanon, 1.2 million people have been disputed displaced. On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered to mourn at least eight members of a displaced Lebanese family who were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit the building they were sheltering in. Among the dead was a six month old infant. This is Abusala who attended the funeral.

[Abusala (Funeral Attendee)]

What would we say? What would we say about the massacres committed against those innocent people, those civilians, those pure believers who are holding onto the land? My mother in law, may God bless her soul, was holding onto the land and her children were holding onto the land.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

In Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least

[Amy Goodman]

three Palestinians, including the head of the

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

criminal police force in Khan Younis, Wassam Abdelhadi and his aide.

[Amy Goodman]

A separate strike killed one person and

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

wounded two others in the Magasi refugee camp in central Gaza. Israel has conducted near daily attacks since the U. S brokered so called ceasefire took effect last October. At least 850 Palestinians have been killed since then. This is Ali Moussa Dababesh who attended the funeral of the policeman.

[Ali Moussa Dababesh]

Although the ceasefire came into effect several months ago, the occupation continues to target police officers in order to cause chaos amongst the people of the same nation. The occupation aims to create chaos and confusion within the Gaza Strip. This is its sole objective.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Israel's deported two activists who were abducted from a Gaza bound humanitarian aid flotilla that was violently intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters late last month. Spanish national Saif Abu Keshek and the Brazilian Thiago Avila were among 175 activists forced off their humanitarian aid ships at gunpoint during Israel's raid on the Global Samud flotilla. Both men faced severe physical abuse, they said while in Israeli custody which their legal team said amounted to torture. This is Saif Abu Keshek speaking after his deportation to Greece.

[Saif Abu Keshek]

I left behind me thousands of Palestinian prisoners, children, women and men. I am sure that the treatment I face is not compared to the suffering they are going through. The testimonies we hear of their torture, of their violation on daily basis. We have to continue mobilizing. We cannot forget the Palestinian prisoners.

[Amy Goodman]

In the occupied west bank, thousands of

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

runners competed in the 10th edition of the Palestine International Marathon on Friday following a two year hiatus due to Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip. Runners gathered outside the Church of the Nativity in central Bethlehem for the start of the race While a parallel 5 kilometer race was held in central Gaza. Among those participating were amputees who lost limbs to Israeli bombs and bullets.

[Amy Goodman]

A BBC funded documentary titled Doctors Under

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Attack won best current affairs program at

[Amy Goodman]

the BAFTA TV Awards Sunday despite being

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

dropped by the network network Last June,

[Amy Goodman]

Channel 4 in the UK picked it

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

up and aired it instead. The BBC pulled the film weeks before its scheduled broadcast.

[Amy Goodman]

In a statement the BBC had said,

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

quote, we have come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risks creating a perception of partiality, unquote. Presenter Ramita Navai and Ben Deper, the executive producer of the documentary, blasted the BBC in their acceptance speeches.

[Ramita Navai or Ben Deper (Documentary Team)]

We refuse to be silenced and censored and we thank.

[Amy Goodman]

Thank you,

[Ramita Navai or Ben Deper (Documentary Team)]

thank you. And we thank Channel 4 for showing this film.

We also wanted to dedicate this award to Jabba Badouan and Osama Al Ashi, the two journalists on the ground who made this film for us, so I'd like a round of applause for them, please. Just a question to the BBC. Given that you dropped our film, will you drop us from the BAFTA screening later tonight? Thank you.

[Amy Goodman]

In the United Kingdom, the far right

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

populist Nigel Farage and his anti immigrant party Reform UK made significant gains in local elections over the weekend as the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, took heavy losses.

[Amy Goodman]

Results show Reform UK gained nearly 1,450 council seats and control of 14 councils, while the Labour Party lost nearly 1,500

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

councilors, leading some members of the Parliament to call on Starmer to resign. The Conservative Party also suffered big losses,

[Amy Goodman]

while the Green Party made gains, claiming hundreds of council seats and winning two mayoral elections. Nigel Farage is a chief architect of

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Brexit and an ally of President Donald Trump. He's repeatedly used racist language to attack immigrants and Muslims, while his former classmates

[Amy Goodman]

may have accused him of racist and anti Semitic bullying. We'll go to London after Headlines for

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

the latest on the British elections, Virginia's

[Amy Goodman]

Supreme Court has struck down a congressional

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

map drawn by Democrats just weeks after voters approved a statewide referendum changing the

[Amy Goodman]

borders of Virginia's 11 congressional districts. The new map could have allowed Democrats to win an additional four House seats in November's midterm elections. Its defeat is a major blow to efforts by Democrats to counter redistricting by Republicans in other states, including floods Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Meanwhile, officials in Alabama have asked the US Supreme Court for permission to throw out Alabama's congressional map, which has two majority black districts. Republicans are seeking to flip at least one of Alabama's two Democratic controlled House seats. Alabama's emergency application came less than two weeks after the Supreme Court's conservative majority gutted the last remaining major provision of the Voting Rights act in a 6 to 3 ruling.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Internal documents obtained by the New York

[Amy Goodman]

Times reveal the Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the Justice Department, rushed Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil's deportation case last month. The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled Khalil could soon be deported. Khalil's case was reportedly considered high priority even before the board officially received it. The decision to deport Khalil also came just nine days after paperwork was submitted. Amero Lopez, who was appointed to the board under President Biden and later fired under President Trump, told the New York Times, quote, that kind of timeline is unprecedented. It's an insane turnaround, particularly for such a high profile case on a novel legal issue. He said at least three judges also

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

reportedly recused themselves from the process.

[Amy Goodman]

On social media, Mahmoud Khalil wrote, quote, this story proves that the Trump administration's treatment of my case has always been corrupt and retaliatory. They put me through a sham immigration process while guaranteeing the outcome in advance, mahmoud Khalil wrote. A Mexican couple held in an ICE jail was finally released and able to reunite with their 18 year old son just a day before he died of cancer. Kevin Gonzalez was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and died Sunday in Mexico. His parents, Isadora Gonzalez Aviles and Norma Annabel Ramirez Amaya, had been arrested in April while trying to reenter the U.S. to visit their dying son. After the request for humanitarian visas was denied on Thursday, an Arizona judge ordered the release of Kevin's parents from ICE custody. On Friday, they returned to Mexico hoping to reunite with their parents. Kevin Gonzalez flew to Mexico a week ago where he had discontinued treatment. His father said, quote, we managed to make my son's dream come true to be with him again, to love him, to give him the love we could not give him during these months when he was not with us, Unquote. The Pentagon says it's blown up another ship in the eastern Pacific, killing two of its passengers and leaving one survivor once again. Officials with U.S. southern Command provided no evidence for their claims that the ship had been carrying drugs. Southcom says it notified the US Coast Guard to begin search and rescue operations for the survivor. There's no word on the person's fate. Similar attacks by the Pentagon in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have reportedly killed 192 people. Legal experts say there are extrajudicial killings and are illegal under U.S. and international law. A CNN analysis finds U.S. military intelligence

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

gathering flights are surging off the coast of Cuba.

[Amy Goodman]

Since February, the US Navy and Air Force have conduct conducted at least 25 intelligence gathering flights off Cuba's coast using the same surveillance aircraft active in the

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

lead up to the US Strikes on Iran.

[Amy Goodman]

Russia and Ukraine accused each other of

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

violating a U S brokered three day ceasefire.

[Amy Goodman]

Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks killed three people and left many others wounded over the weekend, while Russia's Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of breaking the ceasefire more than a thousand times. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces had responded in kind to Russian drone and artillery fire. On Saturday, Russ President Vladimir Putin told reporters he thought Russia's attacks on Ukraine

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

were nearing an end.

[Peter Magyar]

The west promised assistance and then began fueling a confrontation with Russia that continues to this day. I think the matter is coming to an end, but it is a serious matter.

[Amy Goodman]

Putin's remarks came after Russia held victory day celebrations with a military parade that for the first time in nearly two decades featured no tanks, armored vehicles or other heavy weaponry. After the equipment was prioritized for the frontline in Ukraine and in Hungary. Peter Magyar was sworn in Saturday to become Hungary's new prime minister, ending 16 years of Viktor Orban's authoritarian rule. Magyar's pro EU centre right Tisa party won 141 of 199 parliamentary seats last month in a landslide victory. The new speaker of the parliament ordered

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

the EU flag restored to the facade

[Amy Goodman]

of the Hungarian parliament building after 12 years of absent. The Tisa party also held an all day event called a System Changing People's Festival. This is Hungary's new prime minister, Peter Magyar.

[Peter Magyar]

The Hungarian people have given us a mandate to put an end to decades of drifting. They have given us a mandate to open a new chapter in Hungary's history, not only to change the government, but to change the system as well, to start again.

[Amy Goodman]

And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy now, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. Amy Goodman, we begin today's show looking at what's been described as a political earthquake in Britain. In local elections last week, the far right Reform UK Party surged in popularity

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

while the Labour Party suffered heavy losses.

[Amy Goodman]

The Reform UK Party is led by Nigel Farage, who was the chief architect of Brexit, close ally of President Donald Trump. Farage celebrated his party's success.

[Nigel Farage]

But I think overall what's happened is a truly historic shift in British politics. We've been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right, and yet what reform are able to do is to win in areas that have always been conservative. But equally, we're proving in a big way we can win in areas that Labour have dominated, frankly, since the end of World War I.

[Amy Goodman]

Calls are growing for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign after his Labour

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Party suffered historic losses.

[Amy Goodman]

This is Starmer speaking Friday day.

[Keir Starmer]

Let me be clear. These are really tough results. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. And we have lost brilliant Labour representatives, people who put so much into their communities, so much into our party and our movement. And the voters have sent a message about the pace of change, how they want their lives improved. May was elected to meet those challenges and I'm not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos. Well, they've sent a message that the change that we Promised isn't being delivered in a way they can feel, and also, frankly, they're fed up with years of the status quo. But we were elected to deal with those challenges, and I'm not going to walk away from that and to plunge the country into chaos.

[Amy Goodman]

In a sign of the splintering of the British political system, the Conservative Party also suffered significant losses, while the Green Party won hundreds of council seats. We go now to London, where we're joined by the journalist and author Daniel Trilling. His new book is titled if We Tolerate how the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable. Daniel, thanks so much for being with us. Why don't you start off by responding to these historic losses of the Labour Party?

[Daniel Trilling]

Yeah, thanks, Amy. So, absolutely right. This has been a real disaster for the Labour Party. It wasn't quite as disastrous as had been predicted a few weeks ago, but they've sunk to new lows electorally around Britain. So as well as losing hundreds of councillors in England, they lost very badly in the elections for the Welsh Parliament, which were happening at the same time. Labour has dominated Welsh politics for over a century, and they're now, you know, trailing behind the Welsh Nationalist Party, Plaid Cymru and Reform, who've come in second. But it was interesting to hear Nigel Farage his spin on what happened in that clip you played of him earlier, because, yeah, this is historic. Reform have made this huge advance, you know, adding to their tally of council seats that they. They began to rack up last year in similar elections. But actually, in terms of vote share, they underperformed expectations a bit. So Reform got around 26, 27% of the vote overall, but they really benefited from this wider fragmenting of politics. You know, we now have kind of four, five or even six party politics in the uk, depending on exactly where you live. Reform have benefited from that because they've kind of managed to concentrate that vote in areas where they were able to win lots of seats. But actually, this suggestion that Reform have completely kind of erased the distinction between left and right, I don't think is true. And I think Farage is putting that spin on things because Reform were really trying in this election to make bigger inroads into areas that the center right Conservative part party had traditionally been strong in, and they didn't really do as well as expected there. Where they did do well were in areas that voted to leave the EU in the Brexit referendum a decade ago, and where they've always had the attention of a certain chunk of voters. So I think it's the overall Fragmentation. That is the real story here.

[Amy Goodman]

So talk about, well, the title of your book, if We Tolerate this, How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable. If you can talk about who Farage is and what he represents.

[Daniel Trilling]

Yeah. So one of the big changes in British politics in recent years has been this very alarming and rapid rise of ideas and rhetoric associated with the far right. So, you know, very strong anti immigration rhetoric, attacks on supposed elites running the country and so on. You know, things that will be very familiar to your viewers in the US from Donald Trump and his works. And that's really, you know, the pressure there has really come from two sources. One of them is a lot of far right activity outside the electoral system. You know, we've had kind of big street protests and rallies and mob violence, in some cases attacking hotels that are being to accommodate asylum seekers. And then we've had a lot of pressure from Farage's political party, Reform uk, who have been, you know, trying to shape some of these resentments and some of this anger into a right wing populist political project of the kind that we're seeing in lots of different liberal democracies around the world at the moment. You know, for Farage, this is just the latest stage in a kind of long political career where he's come from outside the mainstream right and has tried to make his brand of right wing population populist politics the leading force in Britain. You know, so he was previously leader of the UK Independence Party and via his leadership of ukip, he played an instrumental role in winning the Brexit referendum for the Leave campaign. He then formed another party called the Brexit Party after that to kind of push for the hardest exit from the EU possible and Reform uk the latest vehicle, in fact, it's a renamed Brexit Party. But what he's doing here is actually trying to build a political, political platform that will allow his, him and his party to win power in Westminster nationally. And the key themes that that's built on, you know, is heavily anti immigration and they make a real point of trying to kind of flex their muscles and show how ostentatiously cruel they're going to be to what they call illegal immigrants, which is a wide range of people living in the uk, some of whom have lived here for quite a long time. Earlier this year, one of Reform's big pre local election announcements was that it wanted to create a British ice. So that kind of tells you where they are on that. You know, they made that.

[Amy Goodman]

And now, Daniel, let me play a campaign Ad from Nigel Farage.

[Nigel Farage]

I'm in Essex today and this is the Bell Hotel in Epping. Now, you might remember these scenes being on national news last year. Anyone that comes illegally into Britain on a boat, boat or in the back of a lorry will be detained and deported. But that's going to mean having to detain quite a lot of people who are here already. They should not be free to walk the streets. Policy is very simple. You vote for a reform mp, you will not have a detention facility in your constituency. But if you vote Green or those that support open borders in the world, that's where the detention centres are going to be. Equally, I could say the same of Labour and the Conservatives because they've done nothing to stop it.

[Amy Goodman]

Daniel Trilling, your response?

[Daniel Trilling]

Yeah, I mean, that kind of sums up what reform are about. So like I was saying before, you know, it's kind of making a virtue of how punitive and cruel they're going to be to certain groups of immigrants, but also kind of directing that at their political enemies as well, you know. So this announcement which Farage made a couple of weeks ago, was all about kind of stigmatizing his opposition. So the Green Party who have also kind of broke through from outside the mainstream by taking a kind of strong left wing position. You know, he's trying to class as open borders fanatics. And I mean, what are they saying there? They're kind of threatening to use the power of the state if they ever get hold of it to intimidate their political opponents. You know, placing detention centers in areas that vote for parties that Farage doesn't like. You know, it's kind of punishing people for voting the wrong way and perhaps even trying to scare voters into not opposing him.

[Amy Goodman]

If you can also talk about, we see parallels here in the United States leading up to President Biden's defeat around Israel and Palestine. One of his top advisers, Wendy Sherman, now calling what's happened in Gaza a genocide. Side in Britain you have Keir Starmer Crackdown on Palestine Action, which they've called a terrorist organization. If you can talk about their positions here.

[Daniel Trilling]

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'd say kind of, you know, from having written about the far right for years and, you know, studied the history and so on, I think one thing that governments of the center should really avoid doing is kind of of giving them the tools to play with, you know, so it's a real problem if governments of the center start kind of passing their own draconian authoritarian policies. And I think that's exactly what you've seen with the Starmer government in relation to the Palestine protests. You know, so this protest group that uses direct action, Palestine Action, was classed as a terrorist organization and banned, which as a result means that, you know, hundreds if not thousands of peaceful protests, protesters who have expressed their support for Palestine Action since the ban have also been arrested and are potentially facing criminal conviction just for expressing rhetorical support for that group. And, you know, much like in the us, I think these actions by the government have been in response to a huge amount of public anger. Obviously Israel's war on Gaza, but what they also see is Britain's complicity in that war. So, you know, the UK is a strong military ally of Israel. When the Labour government to power in 2024, they suspended a lot of arms sales to Israel on the grounds that there was a risk they could be used for human rights abuses, but actually carried on supplying certain key items, like parts that could be used in Israel's F35 fighter jet program. And so the government have really tried to just kind of contain dissent in a way that has alienated huge amounts of their core support. I mean, really, I think in these recent elections, much more pressing issues like the cost of living and rising fuel prices and so on were on voters minds. But a lot of that support that would have gone to labor previously, which has gone to the Green Party and to some of the other smaller parties, is also to do with anger over Israel and Gaza and the way that our government has responded to that.

[Amy Goodman]

I also want to ask you about rising support for the Green Party. This is the Green leader, Zach Polanski.

[Zach Polanski]

This is a historic victory. This is the first time the Green Party have ever won a directly elected mayor. And two party politics is not just dying, it is dead and it is buried. And actually, whether it's here that labor have been rejected or whether we're seeing around the country, it's very clear that the new politics is the Green Party versus reform. My message to Keir Starmer is that he needs to go, but I don't think that's my message. I think that's the country's message. We've seen for a long time now his popularity has been going and he's lost the trust of the country. And to see a Labour minister today saying that they don't just respond to the mood of the country, they stick to the plan, I feel very misjudged. But it doesn't feel like a coincidence. That feels like the entitlement and the privilege that this Labour government have acted with every single day that they've been in office.

[Amy Goodman]

Daniel Trilling, your response?

[Daniel Trilling]

Yes. So obviously Zach Polanski and the success of the Greens is the other big development in certainly in English politics because obviously Scotland and Wales had elections, but there's a slightly different political setup in both those countries. The Greens, you know, they've been around for a long time in Britain, but Polanski was elected as their leader last year with a mandate to shift the party quite markedly to the left to pursue what he calls eco populism. So kind of attacking the center of politics, but from the left this time as opposed to reform, who obviously come at it from the right. Right. You know, the Greens have got strong positions on social and social and environmental justice. They also now take a very strong rhetorical stance in support of workers rights. And, you know, they've now got this unprecedented opportunity to put some of their principles into action. They've won control of several local councils in London and other parts of the country. The big question I think is really can they now follow through on this? You know, the Greens at the moment are untested. They've got a lot of goodwill from people who've lent them their votes. But I suppose the one question is can they deliver what they promise? The other question is, you know, Britain at national elections has this first past the post electoral system that does not really very fairly reflect the spread of votes in the country. That becomes even more complicated when you move as we're doing now from a two party system to a multi party party system. So when we get to our next national election, the question is going to be will there be an electoral force on the progressive wing strong enough to keep reform out? And if there isn't a single force like that, how are these different parties, the Greens, Labour, Scottish Nationalists, Welsh Nationalists, who sometimes seem to hate each other more than they hate, you know, their opponents on the right going to come together and collaborate in a way that will stop Britain going down. What I think could be a very dark.

[Amy Goodman]

I wanted to ask you before we go about another country, about Hungary over the weekend. Peter Magyar was sworn in Saturday to become Hungary's new prime Minister. Magyar, ending 16 years of Viktor Orban's authoritarian rule. You've been writing about Hungary. Talk about the significance of this and the damage to the institutions of Hungary during this past 16 years. Daniel?

[Daniel Trilling]

Yeah, I mean, I make a kind of self interested point. First of all, as someone from Britain, I think it's a real lesson in why it's so important to prevent far right populists from winning in the first place because as we've seen over the past decade or more, in the case of Hungary, they can be very hard to dislodge from power. Once they're there, they can end up being pretty popular with the electorate that they try to appeal to. But in pretty much every case where a far right populist is one power around the world, they have undermined institutions that are vital checks and balances on the democratic system. You know, if you think how often free speech is the kind of the watchword of far right populists, I think in every single country where a government has been formed by far right populists, free speech hasn't got any more free. In fact, it's got significantly harder to express dissenting opinions. And Magyar's victory shows kind of what's required, I think, to, to, to push back, which is like, you know, if you get to that stage, a broad coalition of people opposed to the far right populist government. You know, Magyar is a right wing conservative. His, some of his positions won't be that different to some of Viktor Orban's, but he has taken this very strong stand against corruption, against the undermining of the liberal. And so lots of people who don't necessarily share his politics on many of the issues that he stands for have got behind that in a huge effort. Which is why when I was talking about Britain before, I was stressing this need to kind of talk and think about coalitions that can be formed to keep the right wing populists out of power.

[Amy Goodman]

Daniel Trilling, I want to thank you so much for being with us. Journalist and author speaking to us from London. His new book is titled if We Tolerate this How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable. Coming up, we go to Washington D.C. to speak with a Marine veteran who spent five days atop the Frederick Douglass Bridge to protest the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Stay with us.

[Billy Bragg]

Why do we build the wall? My children, My, my children. Why do we build the wall? Why do we build the wall? We build the wall to keep us free. That's why we build the wall. We build the wall to keep us free. How does the wall keep us free? My children, my children. How does the Wall keep us free? How does the Wall keep us free? The Wall keeps out the enemy. We build the wall to keep us free. That's why we build the wall. We build the wall to keep us free. Who do we call the enemy? My children? My children, who do we call the enemy?

[Amy Goodman]

Billy Bragg performing why We Build the Wall in our Democracy now studio. This is democracynow, democracynow.org, the war and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We go now to Washington D.C. where a former Marine reservist and father of2 spent five nights on top of the freight Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to protest the war in Iran and artificial intelligence. Guido Reichstadter scaled the 168foot arch of the bridge on May 1. He continued to post to social media while he was on top of the bridge. In a social media post Tuesday evening, he said he'd run out of water and would head down, adding he expected to be going to jail for weeks. While in an earlier post he wrote, quote, one man on a bridge is relatively powerless. But the collective withdrawal of our obedience and support is capable of bringing a swift end to the regime and its wars. This nonviolent collective action is our greatest power. And it's the exercise of this power that those who rule fear more than any weapon. For the sake of the world, its children, and our future, let us build this power with each other, together, he wrote. This is not the first time Guido has climbed the Frederick Douglass Bridge and protest. In 2022, he spent 24 hours on the bridge to protest the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. He's also a co founder of Stop AI, a grassroots movement to disrupt artificial intelligence technology. After he ended his protest on the bridge, Guido was arrested and charged with unlawful entry, failure to obey an officer,

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

and several other charges.

[Amy Goodman]

Well, Guido Reichstadter joins US in Washington D.C. welcome to Democracy. Now explain what you did.

[Guido Reichstadter]

Good morning. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah. I think like most simply, what I did was follow the call of my heart. I couldn't stay silent in the face of, you know, these ongoing acts of mass murder by the US Government in my name. And I felt like I had a. That I have a duty to

[Keir Starmer]

the

[Guido Reichstadter]

truth, which is that we have the power to end these wars today. We, the people in whose name these murders are being committed, we've got the power and the responsibility to non violently withdraw our support, our cooperation from the system, from the regime which is prosecuting these acts of murder in our nation. And if we do that, we can end them. And that's actually, you know, that's our right, it's our power, and it's. I feel that it's our responsibility.

[Amy Goodman]

Can you, Guido, explain why you came to D.C. planning to attend a talk by Senator Bernie Sanders on the dangers of AI, of artificial intelligence. And yet this protest, though you'd scale the Frederick Douglass Bridge before, was about the US war on Iran.

[Guido Reichstadter]

Sure, yeah. I've been, I've been worried about AI for a long time, since about 25 years when I first heard about the possibility of building artificial general intelligence, or AI systems with the full range of essentially cognitive capabilities of a human, human brain. It just seemed like it was, you know, 25 years ago. Everyone thought that might be hundreds of years in the Future. And since ChatGPT was rolled out in late 2022 and broadly the deep learning revolution, the whole field has really updated quickly and shortened their timelines for when that might be possible. And the world's leading, most cited living scientists, engineers in the field, academics, all recognize that the development of that technology poses the risk of catastrophic harm, even including loss of control of advanced systems and potentially human extinction. So I moved to San Francisco in 2024 to begin social mobilization on that. That's actually what brought me to D.C. on Friday or on last Wednesday.

[Amy Goodman]

Was that a part of your protest? Was it both issues, both AI and the US Israeli war in Iran?

[Guido Reichstadter]

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. There's, there's. So I put it out in the first post that I put on social media when I got on the bridge that was identified. Those, those there are really three. One is the ending the war, removing the Trump revolution regime from power, and an urgent warning to our society about the potential imminent arrival of a kind of point of no return beyond which we'll be consigned to these catastrophic effects from AI. And, you know, I care about the society in which I live. I've got two children and I care about the world. And I feel that I have that responsibility to warn the people that I care about, about a danger that is recognized by, you know, the people who are closest to the development of this technology. And it's coming on fast. And this is, you know, a lot faster than maybe is recognized. And it's great that Senator Sanders held that discussion between academics in China and the United States about the need for global treaty coordinating to stop the development of really dangerous systems. But we need to treat it like an emergency. And that means more than talks, that means action.

[Amy Goodman]

You were raised as an evangelical Christian, a conservative household. Talk about how that informed what you did.

[Guido Reichstadter]

Sure. You know, that's what led me, that's part of what led me to join the Marines right out of high school. And it's also, you know, when I was confronted in University with the reality of American intervention, the history of American intervention and power imperialism in the world. It's what made it also possible, I think, or easier for me to reject that and say, no, this isn't right. Which is what I did in 2003 when, you know, in the run up to the Iraq war. Well, in fact, I refused to deploy to the Iraq war and resigned, you know, essentially refused to deploy, said, I'm not going to train, I'm not going to go fight this war. And you can either let me go or you can send me to jail,

[Rami Elgandor]

but

[Guido Reichstadter]

you can't force me to do what's wrong. And that's what I went up on the bridge to do as well, to say, you know, to the people of my country, it's like what's being done is wrong. And we have, we have to. We have to stand up against it and not accept it. And, you know, if we do that in mass, collectively, we have the power to stop it.

[Amy Goodman]

What is right? Now, Guido, in terms of charges, and do you feel that your protest was a success?

[Guido Reichstadter]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I have currently one federal charge, unlawful entry and a DC charge of failure to obey. And I'm also facing charges in San Francisco for nonviolently blocking the doors of Open Air, one of the leads, leading frontier AI companies. For me, The important thing was doing what's right, doing what I felt I had to do. And I was able, even just trying to do it is the success. Thank God I was able to make it to the top and to go through that action. But doing what's right is the success. Choosing to do what's right and accepting the consequences is the. That's the pivotal, the pivotal thing. That's the pivotal decision that everyone has to make. And if we can make that, that's what's successful. But broadly, I think it has. It has motivated, inspired people even around the world have gotten messages from, you know, hundreds of folks.

[Amy Goodman]

Finally, Guido, I asked you about AI and about the war in Iran. Do you connect the two? The whole question of the use of AI Looking at Michael Claire's comments, artificial intelligence played a major role in selecting targets for attack during Operation epic fury, the US air and missile campaign against

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Iran that began February 28th.

[Amy Goodman]

Your final comment in these last 30 seconds?

[Guido Reichstadter]

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it was not only used as a. As a weapon of war, it is being developed as a weapon of war, but also as a tool for the advancing fascist movement to surveil and control the society which makes war possible and makes resistance more difficult. So and we should expect that as AI systems grow in capability in the future, if this is not stopped, it will destroy democracy and it will probably destroy the world. We've got a responsibility to stop it. If we care about the people we love and the society we live in and our children and their future, we've got to make sacrifices and do what's necessary, even if it's uncomfortable.

[Amy Goodman]

Guido Reichstadter, I want to thank you for being with us. Co founder of Stop AI, father of two. He's the Frederick Douglass Bridge in Washington, D.C. last week to protest the war in Iran. And AI remained on the bridge for four days and five nights. A former Marine reservist coming up, the prominent biotech entrepreneur Rami Elgandur. He had been selected by Rutgers University to address this year's graduating class of engineering students. But then the school canceled his speech, they said over his social media posts on Israel and Palestine stage.

[Zach Polanski]

With us.

[Sophia Shirai]

Sending out the call. Attention and the care to break the fall. Listen close to formulate responses sit in silence next to you for hours. Here it goes. As you are, as I am. Give it all, take it back, start again. Process, resilience, you lose and wonder what the hell happened. I've landed. You stand nostalgic for halcyon days.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Landed.

[Amy Goodman]

By Sophia Shirai this is Democracy Now.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Democracynow.org, i'm Amy Goodman.

[Amy Goodman]

In New Jersey, Rutgers University has abruptly withdrawn its invitation to a prominent biotech entrepreneur and alum to speak at its engineering school convocation. Rami Elgindor, a 2001 alum of the engineering school school, had been scheduled to deliver a graduation address at Rutger's New Brunswick campus May 15, but his invitation was canceled over what the university said were complaints about his social media posts on Israel, Palestine. Two unions of educators at Rutgers University issued a joint statement condemning the university's decision to cancel the speech, calling it politically motivated suppression. That quote reflects a broader pattern of universities applying a Palestine exception to their stated commitments to free speech.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Unconventional, end quote.

[Amy Goodman]

A Gogundor is also executive producer of

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

the Oscar nominated film the Voice of

[Amy Goodman]

Hindra Zhaab about the killing of a

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

Palestinian child and her family in Gaza,

[Amy Goodman]

along with paramedics who tried to rescue them. And the film American Doctor that premiered earlier this year at Sundance Film Festival.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

The film following three doctors who go to Gaza to volunteer.

[Amy Goodman]

Rami Elgendorf joins us now in New York. Thank you so much for being with us. Talk about what happened, happened.

[Rami Elgandor]

Thanks, Amy. It's a pleasure to be Here. I appreciate the opportunity. I was invited by Rutgers in December of 2025, principally because of my student engagement. I do a lot of student engagement as an alum with Rutgers University, and I love the students and spend a lot of time with them. I actually did a fireside chat with this dean that issued me that invitation in December, in March, in early March, I believe. And then a couple of weeks ago, about two weeks before I was set up to give the graduation address, I received the call that I was disinvited.

[Amy Goodman]

Why?

[Rami Elgandor]

As you shared, it was very vague. There was no specifics. I asked for specifics. It was to quote the dean that my social media posts opposed the beliefs of a few students. I asked how many students? He said, a few. A few to me sounds like maybe five or so. So it seemed unbelievable to me that for a class of 1,000 students that a handful of students, students having complaints would lead to this outcome. And look, I am obviously a big proponent of free speech, but disagreement is not harm. Having a different point of view is not harming these students in any way to lead to this sort of outcome.

[Amy Goodman]

I want to ask you about your background. You were alum of Rutgers.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

And then talk about what you went on to do.

[Rami Elgandor]

Sure. Yeah. So I graduated from Rutgers in 2001 with a degree in honor electrical computer engineering. I worked for five years as an engineer. I then went on to business school at Wharton Business School in Philadelphia. From there I got into venture capital and moved to the great state of California, where I was in venture for about five years as well. I then joined my first startup. I built that startup from about 30 to 1,000 people, took it public on the New York Stock Exchange, was there for about seven years. I then left, took a couple of years off and joined my most recent company, arcelix, where I'm chairman and CEO. And for that organization, I ran it for the past five and a half years. We were just acquired by Gilead for $7.8 billion. And we make cancer therapeutic. That is what I believe to be the best therapeutic option ever developed from multiple myeloma.

[Amy Goodman]

And so has Rutgers courted you through the years?

[Guido Reichstadter]

Of course.

[Rami Elgandor]

I feel like I am the poster child for Rutgers School of Engineering. I've made a lot of my degree. I get asked all the time. Time is an engineering degree, valuable, given what I do today. And it's absolutely valuable. And I'm so proud of Rutgers. And it's really just been heartbreaking to go through these last couple of weeks.

[Amy Goodman]

It's interesting that Rutgers has dealt with some student complaints over your invitation versus what happened with another event just last month. In April, the Rutgers chapter of Students Supporting Israel invited a former soldier from the Israeli Department Defense Forces who'd served in Gaza last year to come to campus. Despite protests by pro Palestinian and Muslim and Arab groups and a petition signed by over 7,000 people of the Rutgers community demanding the event be canceled. The event took place as planned.

[Rami Elgandor]

Yeah, I mean, look, I think if I had to summarize this entire dialogue around Israel and Palestine, I would summarize it using the word false equivalency. And it's a false equivalency across a couple of different metrics. The first one is on free speech. So on the one side, we talk about these cancellations. I've seen a lot of these articles online about my speech was canceled. And there was a speech cancelled at GW Law, but that speech was not canceled. That speaker actually withdrew. I'm actually an alum of the School of Engineering. That speaker was not even a law graduate, let alone had any. Any association with Georgetown. So it seems like there's, on one side, actual free speech. On the other side, not so much. Let's talk about America. America first. On the one side, I've never heard a pro Palestine advocate ask for one penny for Palestine. On the pro Israel side, we're constantly asked, not even asked, demanding unlimited funding and political coverage. So I keep hearing this sort of like false equivalency, like, oh, both sides are kind of the same. They are not the same. And then lastly, from a principles perspective, on the Palestine side, we are advocating for equality. On the pro Israel side, Israel is the only country in the world that still automatically and systematically prosecutes children in military court. They just passed a law that legitimized or passed the death penalty only for Palestinians for one ethnic minority. So, look, you asked about my background, Amy. I'm a CEO who made their career by being in the details. I constantly hear that, you know, there's sort of two sides to this issue, and there are two sides, but they couldn't be more starkly different.

[Amy Goodman]

What would you have said in your speech?

[Rami Elgandor]

I really was talking about the journey that got me here. You know, a lot of the student engagement I do, the one question they ask me is, how did I manage to be as successful as I've been without compromising my beliefs and my values? So I go mostly through my career arc, and the two things I focus on are being yourself and choosing kindness as a way to lead.

[Amy Goodman]

And you get pushback at Arsellux for your views.

[Rami Elgandor]

I do not. I have friends as well as colleagues that are of all different races, ethnicities, including Jewish friends and colleagues and Arseliks itself. I have had no issues. I've had multiple attempts from outside of Arselics to cancel me or silence me over my speech and my time there as CEO, but never from within the company.

[Amy Goodman]

On April 20, Congressmember Ro Khanna wrote on social media, the free ride is over. Israel has a 45 billion dollar defense budget. I am Team America, khanna wrote. Yoo replied to the Post, writing, forget a free ride.

[Amy Goodman (Reporter/Narrator)]

They've committed genocide.

[Amy Goodman]

They're running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners. Weapons embargo is the absolute minimum. Sanctions and diplomatic isolation are beyond justified. This we'll sell them weapons won't fly. Unquote. On Sunday, Democracy now reached out to Rutgers to invite a representative to join us on the show or send us a statement on why why your speaking invitation was rescinded. Resgers sent us the following statement, quote, in response to objections from students regarding Mr. Elgon Dor's social media posts, including one that shared an inflammatory claim, and following the Dean's own discussions with Mr. Elgandor that raised concerns about whether the event and his remarks would remain consistent with the celebratory nature of the occasion, the School of Engineering decided to rescind the speaking invitation for the school convocation. Interestingly, today, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has a new article out headlined the Silence that Meets the Rape of Palestinians. In it, Kristof writes about a Gaza journalist detained by Israel in 2024. Nicholas Kristof writes, quote, on one occasion he said he was held down, stripped naked, and he was blindfolded and handcuffed. A dog was summoned with encouragement from a handler in Hebrew, he said the dog mounted him. He tried to dislodge the do said, but it penetrated him. Kristof goes on to write, other Palestinian prisoners and human rights monitors have also cited reports of police dogs being coached to rape prisoners, unquote. Christophe Peace Links to reports from BBC, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye your comments on what has been cited.

[Rami Elgandor]

Yeah, I mean first of all I just want to be clear that Rutgers never shared that with me. So it is dishonest at this point to come out and point to this tweet when I repeat it repeatedly asked what the source of this invitation was and they said they never even reviewed my social media, let along had a specific tweet to point to and you can verify that in that their initial statement to the Associated Press said that said we hadn't reviewed anything. And now after drawing a lot of fire, they decided to point to something. The second thing I'll say before I get to the human rights issue is that the idea that as a public company CEO, I'm just tweeting willy nilly things that are not verifiable liable is just farcical and laughable. So it's an embarrassing position for the university to take. The third, though, and the most important of these is how morally bankrupt can you be to read that tweet and have your concern be the content of the tweet rather than the accusations in it. And the fact that Palestinians are systemically not believed despite the overwhelming evidence, as I talked about in this false equivalency dynamic of rape, murder, murder, prosecution, I mean, we are talking, forget the genocide in Gaza, forget the terrorism in the West Bank. Save the Children, one of the most prominent organizations in the world, says that half of the children abducted by Israel are sexually assaulted. What are we talking about? Like, how is this still a dialogue in this country? And this is maybe the most disturbing thing I have ever heard. Yeah, sorry. This is the most disturbing thing I've ever heard with respect to this sexual assault by animals.

[Amy Goodman]

I thank you for being with us. Rami Elgandor, biotech entrepreneur, scheduled to deliver graduation address at Rutgers, but his invitation was canceled. He's executive producer of the Oscar nominated film the Voice of Hind Raja. I am Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.