Jonah Blank (10:24)

Thank you for having me, Mike. And I'm old too, but not as old as Asia.

Mike Pesca (10:28)

So this was my first question as I was watching the protests and hearing their complaints. Was the complaint, and a righteous one, in that the government was in fact using the classic means of suppression, of withholding the free flow of information? Or was it More of, was it more of entertainment or based on something other than we need our accurate information so that we as the people can react in a civically responsible way. In other words, was this about newspapers printing accurate information or was this about social media and hashtags?

Jonah Blank (11:09)

It was about social media, but that's a bigger thing than just watching the latest trends on TikTok. In Nepal, as in many countries, most countries, probably social media is where people get their news, where people get their information. So the newspapers even to some extent the radio stations, the TV stations in Nepal are not really all that important. They matter. But Nepal is a very social media focused place, as are basically every country in the world nowadays. And Nepal in particular, for reasons we can discuss, largely due to the incredible number of people working overseas and sending home remittances, social media plays an even bigger role there.

Mike Pesca (11:57)

Yeah, and the reason they have to work overseas is the other major factor. And this is always, this is a constant. It's the economy. But is it the case that the government, the elected government, was trying to repress information? Could do newspapers and can newspapers, newspapers with websites. Are they able to report on corruption within the ranks of the leadership? Are they able to freely report on dissidents or are they suppressed and oppressed?

Jonah Blank (12:27)

They're not so much suppressed as just irrelevant. They exist, they do their job. It's good that they're doing their job. You have to have journalists in every country doing their job. But if it were just old school journalists, the government wouldn't have cared. What they really cared about were things like TikTok, where the incredible new wealth is just being put out there in people's faces. Nepal has done better in the past couple decades under democracy than it had done before. Economically, there's a lot more money coming in, but as is the case often it's not very evenly distributed. So you get a lot of the, the wealthy showing off their new, their new wealth on TikTok, on Instagram, on every platform, and then the people who don't have all these goodies don't like it.

Mike Pesca (13:20)

Right, right. So the Prime Minister's son and daughter in law, they're something of other Kardashian types, they flaunt their wealth. This angers people and that was why the government wanted to take away. Well, it's interesting you said TikTok a few times, but from what I understand there was a law that all social media companies had to comply with and TikTok did agree to comply with the law, but some of the others didn't Right.

Jonah Blank (13:45)

And just as everything else in Nepal, nothing really operates the way it's supposed to, and nothing really operates very efficiently. So for, for example, when you say, is the media oppressed? Well, I mean, to some extent, but not very effectively. Nepal didn't do democracy very effectively. It doesn't do oppression very effectively. Even the social media crackdown, it wasn't all that universal. I had WhatsApp communications with extended family members there. And part of the reason it wasn't so effective is that everybody's got a VPN or, or at least everybody in the middle classes who can afford it. Everybody who wants a VPN has got a vpn, but it's who wants to have to jump through all these, these hoops and have the government telling you, don't worry, there's nothing to see here when you're seeing right in your Instagram feed a politician's daughter showing off her Gucci bag.

Mike Pesca (14:45)

Right. So it was a populist uprising. We want our social media back. Not just to send around stupid memes though, that too, but because much that, yes, but because it's reflecting poorly on you, the elite. So that's, that's basically the story of.

Jonah Blank (15:02)

The uprising and this underlying anger of, wait a second, we're not really getting much benefit from all this money flowing in. We're not getting much benefit from this democracy everybody's talking about. In the meantime, we're feeling some of the negative sides. For example, back the first time I went to Nepal was, I'm showing how old I am now, 1994. And Kathmandu was a totally different place than it is now. It was, it had the feel almost of a quaint village compared with how it is right now. Now Kathmandu has terrible, unbreathable air traffic jams that take you an hour to get across across town. So everybody has to deal with the downside of being brought into the world trade and the world economic system. But they're not getting the Gucci bags and they're not getting really much of the jobs outside of kind of some low level service economy jobs people still have to go to, you know, to the Gulf and work in practically indentured servitude just to pay the bills.

Mike Pesca (16:06)

When did Nepal throw off the shackles of the monarchy?

Jonah Blank (16:11)

Well, Nepal became a constitutional monarchy in 1990 and the monarchy itself was abolished in 2008. Whether it was the shackles or not is kind of depends on who you, you know, who you're asking and when, because it was never really a particularly brutal monarchy. The monarchy had A lot of popular support, in some ways similar to the monarchy in Thailand, which under the previous king had tremendous popular support and still sort of does. Even now there are monarchists in Nepal, quite a few of them. The thing is, the entire royal family was virtually killed off in 2001 by Crown Prince Dipendra. There was nothing political about it. He had some real serious mental problems. And for a whole interesting story of reasons, he basically slaughtered most of his family. His father, Ganendra, happened to be out of the palace at the time, and he then inherited the monarchy. But he was never a popular figure. He still isn't. He's still in Kathmandu right now, thinking he's going to come back into power and maybe he will. But he never had the popular support and the love that his brother and his predecessors had had.

Mike Pesca (17:28)

But this slaughter essentially wipes away the most unifying force in a country that we're soon to see has disunity and factionalism in its future.

Jonah Blank (17:41)

Yes, I wouldn't oversell the degree to which the monarchy was binding Nepal together. I would say Nepal was and still is bound together by inert. Remember, this is a very mountainous, craggy, essentially in essentially very localized country. On a map, it looks like one country, but it can take you weeks to get from Kathmandu to the other side of the country if you're going by bus, which is how most people would go. So it wasn't really in anyone's interest to break away and have these different little, tiny little statelets. But a lot of the factionalism that we see looks very ideological. You know, the factions are the. The Congress Party, sort of a traditional center centrist liberal party, and two different communist parties, the uml, the Communist Party United Marxist Leninists and the Maoists. However, the Maoists and the Marxist Leninists, they're only communist in a very, very light sense of the term. There's very little ideology behind it.

Mike Pesca (18:54)

So the current or the. Up until a couple of days ago, weeks ago, the prime minister, who is Sharma Oli, he was a communist, he was a revolutionary. He promised freedom and then he just failed to deliver based on difficulty or corruption or intention meeting reality. What's your assessment?

Jonah Blank (19:16)

Well, he was a communist, but I wouldn't say he was ever a revolutionary. He had never been out in the jungle. He had never been outside of the political mainstream. The Maoists, on the other hand, had fought a very bloody revolutionary struggle for over a decade from about 1996 until about 2006. And they then won the first free and fair post monarchy election in 2008, however, when they came into power, these three parties have basically been trading places, playing a little game of musical chairs for. Let's see, that's 2008 to 20, 20, whatever the math is 17, 18 years.

Mike Pesca (20:00)

Yeah. And the terms only last a couple years. So not much changes, Right.

Jonah Blank (20:05)

Between the parties, elementary structure, they. They just keep on sort of failing to deliver anything and then getting voted out of office in the next election. And whenever you look at Nepali politics in this time and you talk to Nepali and you sort of ask what's going on, people's attitude is always, yeah, well, whatever, you know, it's just nothing really changes. Nothing really happens. Oli for Oli was prime minister, I think it was five times. Daoba was definitely prime minister five times. That is the Congress Party politician leader. And Prachanda, the Maoist leader, was prime minister a few times. None of them really did anything. They all were corrupt. They all basically just were perceived to be in it for themselves and not really delivering very much to their constituents.

Mike Pesca (21:00)

Given the geography, the history where they. Well, let's not take where they are now. I want to talk about the potential. Is the. Has the potential of Nepal been squandered or is it more the case that it is, though filled with 30 million people, fairly isolated, fairly mountainous, a country that isn't at the crossroads of the world maybe doesn't have the infrastructure. I know there's a water crisis in Kathmandu. It has a lot of problems and we really couldn't have expected it to be the next Asian tiger.

Jonah Blank (21:36)

I think there's a lot of potential. And also its output, or at least what it has delivered for its people, is far, far below whatever potential it might have. The potential of the Nepali people, you can see just by the fact that they go all around the world and do incredibly difficult things that other people are not as able to do. For example, I've spent a lot of time in Afghanistan during the war years over there, and Nepalis were everywhere. They were running the food services for the Americans. They were running protection, that is the legitimate paid mercenary protection for the Americans, the Brits, for everyone. I'm sure you've heard. I'm sure most of your audience has heard of the Gurkhas. The Gukas are a particular type of, particular military formation of Nepalis, almost all of them Gurungs, a particularly sub set a community near Pokhara, which in the 19th century kind of got into the business of being mercenaries in part because of British colonialism, and found that they're very, very good at it. So you can go to Hong Kong, you can go to Singapore, you can go to the Gulf and you'll find Nepali's undertaking some of the most important security missions that the wealthiest people in the world do not entrust to anyone else.

Mike Pesca (23:03)

Tell me about the possibilities of the new Prime Minister Shashila Kharki, who is a anti corruption Supreme Court justice. What hope is there for her to break through given the situation that you've laid out?

Jonah Blank (23:19)

I have to be a little pessimistic just because it's so hard to grasp for reasons to look at Nepal and say things are going to be radically different tomorrow than they were yesterday. She doesn't really have any kind of power base she's only put in at so that it wasn't one of the other three parties, all three of which are utterly discredited. The military is the only group that has any real power and it doesn't have any real love. They're not a beloved military. So she can stay in as long as the military keeps her in. But that's very different from actually delivering something or creating a movement. So if you were to ask me how I would bet things play out. I would bet, bet that there is another election within a certain number of months and one of the three parties goes in this cycle again. Whichever one of them is smart about it may jettison its old, old leadership and try to rebrand itself to get ahead of this anger.

Mike Pesca (24:25)

Right. The idea of the beloved military or at least the repository of public trust, this is true in places like Turkey and true in Pakistan. And it's not always a good thing, but at least it reflects that there is institution that has credibility. And to me, from all your description and everything that I've been reading, it seems like Nepal is a place without any credible institutions. And into that mall comes social media which is has a lot of dislocations associated with it. Everything that you're saying makes me worried for this place that I've always had a lot of affection for. Also I like the hats, I like their flowers, flag. I like the name Kathmandu. All these, all these reasons. And the Gurkhas, very good reasons. Do you? I don't know if you've done a study of this or have any inclination, but this is a mutiny. This is an uprising that was very quick and they got what they wanted very quick, quickly. And I don't know that it had real leaders per se. It certainly didn't have a bunch of people who are shaping the ideology and Crafting some sort of shadow government and really thinking in a rigorous way about replacing the government or ideology. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing for the possibility of a future when there is an uprising that stems from that sort of hard work that was put in. But, man, in Nepal, it just happened in an instant. It was like it was the first flash mob that overthrew a country. And I would have to guess that that does not augur well for the possibility of real, lasting, effective change.

Jonah Blank (26:06)

Yeah, Nepal is a place where things tend to happen very quickly and then very slowly.

Mike Pesca (26:12)

So we saw ascent and descent of a mountain.

Jonah Blank (26:16)

Yeah, exactly. We saw the royal family were wiped out. And it was such a shock to everyone in Nepal because this had been one of the anchors, even though for a lot of people, the royals were very, very remote. But they also were a fact of life. They were the government. They were what you thought of when you thought of the government. Out in the rural areas, which is where most Nepalis live, people still talk when they say they're going to Kathmandu, sometimes they talk about going to Nepal as if that's someplace different from where they live. And the royals were one of the things that at least let them feel like they were part of the same country. But then after the royals were overthrown and the Maoists came in, and The Maoists in 2008 had, in my view, and I'd been saying this within government circles for years before that, actually about a decade at that point, they had probably more popular legitimacy than anybody else. But then it took them forever just to write a constitution. It took them seven years before there was any constitution even written. And even then, it was largely just on paper. So I think a lot of the problem is not so much are we going to see a French Revolution, or to put it in Nepali terms, back before the Maoists came in, I used to have big arguments with the US Ambassador to Nepal who used to say, we can't ever let the Maoists come in. It'll be like the Cambodian revolution, like the Khmer Rouge. It'll be year one. We're not going to see something like that. But I think we may well see just more cycles of governments changing and not really getting anything done that helps the. The people with their very legitimate grievances.

Mike Pesca (28:12)

I have always said no oldest established news and analysis daily podcast has a better Asia expert on hand than Jonah Blank. He has. He's in WhatsApp groups from everywhere from Kathmandu to Ulan Bator. He is the author of Moolahs on the Mainframe. An Era of the Blue Skinned God. Very good to talk to you again. I would say let's do it again under better circumstances, but we honestly have you on for revolutions, don't we?

Jonah Blank (28:36)

Hey, I. Any time you give a call, Mike, I will jump to it and gladly be here.

Mike Pesca (28:43)

So it's Ulaan Bator, Kathmandu in Brooklyn. Those are your WhatsApp groups.

Jonah Blank (28:47)

I'm actually none in. I've got to start some WhatsApp groups. I'm really interested in what Mom Donnie is doing, but I don't have any active now.

Mike Pesca (28:56)

All right, we'll get on that. Speaking of Maoist revolutionaries, you mean.

Jonah Blank (29:01)

That's right. There you go. Well, he's about as close to a Maoist revolutionary as Perchanda is.

Mike Pesca (29:07)

Thank you so much, Jonah.

Jonah Blank (29:09)

Thanks, Mike.

Jeff Bridges (29:17)

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Dana (29:19)

Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?

Jeff Bridges (29:22)

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Dana (29:29)

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Jeff Bridges (29:41)

Wow, impressive. Let me try. T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.

Jonah Blank (29:48)

Nice.

Dana (29:49)

Jeffrey, you heard them.

Jeff Bridges (29:50)

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Mike Pesca (29:52)

Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.

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Dana (29:59)

Dude, my work here is done.

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Mike Pesca (30:51)

And now the spiel. Hamas got the facts apparently they have agreed to release all the Israeli hostages and the bodies of those who have died in captivity. Or I should be more clear and less passive. They have killed in captivity. The New York Times does note, however, the question is whether Hamas's response will satisfy Israel and the White House. Now, as to the second part of that. A few hours before Hamas said they've released the hostages, Trump truth that hamas had until 6pm Eastern Time on Sunday to agree to all his terms to end the war in Gaza or quote, all hell like no one has ever seen before will break out against Hamas. He later said after reviewing the proposal that he believes Hamas is, quote, ready for lasting peace and therefore, quote, israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza so that we could get the hostages out safely and quickly. Right now it's far too dangerous to do that. It's the first time that Trump has ever called on Israel to halt any part of its military offensive in Gaza. The statement that Hamas gave about releasing the hostages should also be noted did not talk about all aspects of the deal, like giving up their arms or if they would try to slaughter their members who agreed to live without attacking Israel in the future. Still, I do believe Israel has got to accept this arrangement. It is in all 20 points and they should do whatever they can to push for 20 points. But turning this down or saying not good enough is not in Israel's interests. Hamas has been so degraded that Israel will be able to live with whatever remnants of them there are in at least the near term. And an agreement of a deal doesn't mean that Israel will forever or even in the medium term, stop policing acts of aggression, specifically by Hamas out of Gaza. I would not expect a full scale surrender of Hamas. It is way too hard for a morally convicted martyrdom cult to ever do that. But this is such a core demand. The hostage release is such a core demand of the Israeli public. It can't be ignored. According to a recent poll, the majority of the Israeli public think it is time to end the war in Gaza, 66% of the total sample. This includes both Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis. Jewish Israelis 60% believe that Arab Israelis, of course get a vote, but it just shows that Jewish Israelis are almost exactly where the nation is as a whole. The Israel Democracy Institute also asks, in your opinion, which of the two declared war goals toppling Hamas or bringing home the hostage should be Israel's main goal today. And this was asked just a couple of weeks ago. And if you look at bringing back the hostages that has gone from 47% in 2024, January 24 to 59% in September of 24 to 61.5% in September of 25. And that is just among Jewish Israelis. Among Arab Israelis it's 82%. Even among Jewish Israelis, more than a 2 to 1 margin say that bringing home the hostages, not toppling Hamas, is the main goal of the war. Now this might not be Netanyahu's main goal, especially if he sees further polling from the Israel Democracy Institute that says he must go. Half of Israelis say he should resign immediately, 20% say after the war. But remember the name of the institute doing the polling. And this is what I want to talk about. It's the Israeli Democracy Institute and that's accurate. Israel is a democracy and its status as a democracy is driving a lot of the dynamic in forming this war. Netanyahu does in fact act undemocratically, does certainly kowtow to pressure from far right wingers to hold his coalition together. I guess that might be a vestige of democracy itself. But we should also say that democracy depends on elections. And the timing of the October 7, 2023 attacks were such that there weren't going to be elections for a long, long time in Israel. And if elections had occurred, we might get a totally different and less gruesome dynamic with the war. But this is important because the status of Israel as a democracy isn't just a good talking point or something you say in front of the United nations to try to earn favor among, I guess, all the non democracies. It's not just a way to make Israel seem aligned with the values of countries like the United States or NATO members. It is to the Zionists who founded Israel. To the Zionists of Israel today, the status as a democracy is intertwined with the belief that that is the system of government, or maybe only aligned with the way to save their own lives. The history of pogroms, extermination, inquisitions, the Final Solution. All of those, let's remember, were overseen by autocratic rulers. The story of Zionism would have to be a story of democracy. It was decided. And the democracies in the world today are the countries that have best protected Jews. The countries with the most Jews as a percentage of population, or even just in total, are all democracies. Israel, the us, France, Canada, the uk, Russia's up there. A lot of that is because Jews have not always been able to escape Russia. And we should also note that things aren't going so great for the Jews, especially in France and If you look at the UK yesterday, all over the world, they're going less great for the Jews than they have in the previous recent decade. But they are a relative safe haven in part, in large part because of the structure of the government. And I know Israel always gets accused of not being a true democracy due to the treatment of its noncitizens within their boundaries, though not necessarily the 20% of the Israeli population who are Arab Israelis, who we talked about, but this is also or was also true of the United States, said now not to have been a full democracy before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Good argument there. But I can assure you During World War II, you can bet that the US thought of itself as a democracy and acted as such and said it's a big thing that distinguishes it from the undemocratic nature of its rivals and its opponents. And we know how motivated reasoning works and we know that people have blinders on also. But we also know that telling yourself a story like we're a democracy and we have some ideals to uphold as such, that has a real effect on the world. You know, I'll bring it back to Israel and Netanyahu and democracy in a second. But I just want to address side note, the Israel, are they really a democracy? There is something called the democracy matrix that's put out and they rank Israel as the 35th, fourth most democratic country in the world. 36 United States, the Economist also has a democracy index. And there Israel's just a little couple of places lower than the US but they're above Belgium, they're above Italy. My point is that just as during World War II in the United States, being a democracy was a thing that wasn't just taken for granted, it was taken for true and is the thing that drove the actions of a country. Perhaps aspirationally, the same thing goes on with Israel in this war. That's defining their national character. Israelis during this war are acting as Israelis. They're confirming their self image. And a big part of that self image is care for Jews is yearning to bring the hostages home. Another part of their self image is that they are a democracy. They get to say these things and they are hostile to their prime minister. Once this hostage deal is known to the Israeli public, I do not think rejecting it would be possible. It won't just appall Israelis, it will make them say, how is it that we're living in a democracy if our leaders can possibly reject this deal that embodies our most fervid goal, the release of the hostages doesn't just appeal to Israelis as Jews or as citizens, but fundamentally as democratic actors. Netanyahu might not like it, but he can't resist it. I do not think if he wants to lay claim to the status of the country that you always hear that it is aligned with the west and that it is unique in its neighborhood. Of course, there is another leader of quite a big democracy who we've already mentioned, who does have a lot to say about this deal to the leader of our democracy and with him, the status of his country as a democracy might not be as important to him, the leader of the democracy, as to the demos, the people themselves. And that's it for today's show. Cory Warra produces the Gist. Ashley Kahn is our production coordinator. Jeff Craig runs our social media. Kathleen Sykes writes the Gist List with me today on the Just List. Well, on Wednesdays we run a long piece. I call it the Pesca Profundities piece. And I'm running a piece that originally ran in the Free Press, a peace of mind that I've been working on for a long, long time. And audio version of this will be coming down the pike. Text 33777 the word Mike text the word Mike get 25% off just list and substack subscriptions. All right, thanks to everyone who made this possible, but especially Michelle Pesca who helps me camera angles and cap placement improve G Peru Do Peru and thanks for listening.

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