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3611 - The Secret History Zionist Have Hidden w/ Molly Crabapple
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- [00:01]
A
Hi folks. This episode is brought to you by Smalls Smalls. Is the news making you want to cuddle up with your cat? Well, Smalls fresh cat food is protein packed recipes made with preservative free 100% human grade ingredients you'd find in your fridge and it's delivered straight to your door. That's why Katz.com is named Smalls their best overall cat food For a limited time get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com/mainjury. Starting with smalls is easy. You just share info about your cat's diet, your their food preferences. Then Smalls puts together a personalized meal plan for your cat. No more picking between random brands at the store. Smalls has the right food that will satisfy any cat's cravings. I will tell you this and this is my little secret. Like the way that I have my cat like me. As far as I can tell, cats are very transactional. I mean no aspersions, but that's just what I noticed. My cat loves Small's cat food, but literally like now it's crawling around in the cabinets where I keep the Small's broth Loves it goes crazy to the point where I will concede that sometimes what I do is not only do I put it on the food, I will put it on my fingers just to co mix my scent and the food that he loves so that he will, you know, be nicer to me and not meow in the morning. And it seems like it's almost working. I haven't been able to communicate. But he does love it. Forbes ranked Small as the best overall cat food. While Buzzfeed said my cats went completely ballistic for this stuff. You know, aside from the convenience and aside from like the sort of the healthiness that Smalls is, my cat just loves it. After switching to smalls, 88% of cat owners reported overall health improvements. And of course that is a big deal. The team at Smalls is so confident your cat's gonna love their product, you can try it risk free. That means they'll refund you if your cat won't eat their food. And they have snacks, other snacks too that the cats love. But he just I don't know what it is about the broth. Stop guessing which meals are going to upset your cat's stomach for a limited time because you're a majority Report listener gets 60% off your first order plus free shipping. When you head to smalls.com majority one last time, that's 60% off your first order plus Free Shipping when you go to smalls.com majority and now time for the show the Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday, March 30, 2026. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Molly Crabapple, artist and author, new book entitled Here Where We Live Is Our country the Story of the Jewish Bund. Also on the program today, day 31 of US and Israel's war against Iran. Trump threatens to take Iran's oil and some secret mission to take Iran's uranium and to obliterate Iran's energy and water infrastructure and claims that Iran paid tribute to him. Meanwhile, the Pentagon sending 10,000 more US troops to the Middle east where up to 50,000 troops all are already stationed. About 6 to 10 of those are relatively newly stationed. Spain has closed its airspace to US Warplanes. Last Friday the House rejected the Senate spending deal on dhs. Trust Trump to pay the TSA from a DHS slush fund of dubious legality. This as the Republicans now fully own the DHS shutdown. No Kings rallies across the country in what appears to be the largest single day protest in US History. Now their eyes are turning to a one day general strike on May Day. Russian oil tankers allowed through the blockade to reach Cuba. Israeli police block Catholics from a Palm Sunday mass at Jerusalem's Holy Septica. This is the first time this has happened. Wednesday Supreme Court to hear birthright citizenship arguments and a discharge petition on extending temporary protected status for 350,000 Haitians reaches the signature threshold. Lastly, Avi Lewis was elected NDP leadership in Canada last night or this weekend. Rukali came on the program to prove promote that candidacy. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen. It is Sunday. Monday, fun day Monday. Oh yes, just another fun week ahead of us. We did not invade Iran yet with boots on the ground as it were over the weekend. So that's good. Unclear whether Trump is waiting for 10,000 more troops to get into the region or if he just keeps looking for some type of out where people can agree, like to agree that he won. The problem is is that I mean people should be aware of this. There are always people who are going to win in a war like this and they're winning right now. There are people who in addition to weapons manufacturers we have used like more Tomahawk missiles. I mean just billions of Dollars.
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B
I mean, there was also an analysis about how much oil and gas is making. ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, all raised their earnings estimates.
- [07:12]
A
Well, that's exactly the point. All of the oil interests, all of the LNG interests, they're making huge money now because they're still spending. Just let me just do this in simple math because I don't know the exact numbers, but let's say it cost $30 to extract a barrel of oil from wherever it is around the country. On average, $30. And the price of oil is $60. They make $30. Well, now the price of oil, because there's less of it, is at $110. So those, those barrels of oil that they pull out of the ground still cost them $30. It's just now they have a $80 markup and that's, I mean, that's where we're at.
- [08:03]
B
So there should be windfall taxes on these kinds of corporations, let alone like we should be nationalizing them.
- [08:09]
A
Well, we could ask Scott Bessant, but I'd like someone to dig into what his holdings are in liquid natural gas. My suspicion is quite extensive. It'd be tough to reach his planting season. Yeah, exactly. He's out. He's out in the fields right now. And incident. I mean, it's going to hurt his farming business a little bit because of the expense it's going to be for. For fertilizer now, but we'll see. Here is Donald Trump in his. Well, this was him on let's do this on Friday. He is at the Future Investment Initiative in Miami, Florida.
- [08:55]
B
He was not at cpac. He said that he had prior commitments. This is where he was. Instead of going to cpac, a Saudi investment conference, do you think that they wired it directly into his bank account or. I mean, they outbid cpac, clearly.
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A
Oh, do you think it's just for cash? That's very cute. No, we're far more sophisticated than that. But here he is talking to the Saudis. Is that what it is, the Future Investment Initiative?
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C
Yeah.
- [09:31]
A
And he sort of, I guess, I guess gives a little bit of a clue as to what he thinks he's doing as a leader. And we had a deal. We had. I was going there and I didn't want to go during the war. I said, look, you know, we have a thing called a war or as they would rather say, a military operation. It's for legal reasons. I say military because as a military operation, I don't need any approvals. As a war, you're Supposed to get approval from Congress, something like that. So I call it a military operation. But we now, if we had like, I don't know, any resourceful congresspeople, it seems to me that you have now, like, I don't know, you could sue somewhere or I mean, he's just revealed that he thinks it's a war.
- [10:24]
B
But you can't say that. This is also like the third or fourth time that he said this publicly where he's like, I'm violent, violating the law excursion. Stop me. This is, this is the, we've said, you know, how the lack of accountability for war criminals specifically coming out of Iraq has led to this moment. But without a doubt, it's so acute.
- [10:45]
A
And also, let's be clear, you know, like I have seen arguments about, particularly after Platner came out and was very explicit in saying the Democratic leadership could do better on, on this. Of course they could do better. But people don't seem to understand that's not just a critique on Chuck Schumer's failure as a leader, like his leadership qualities. Is there anybody who actually believes that Chuck Schumer was at best, at best somewhat ambivalent about Trump going to war? Because I would put it, I'm just trying like, you know, for the sake of argument, I would say ambivalent. But it's quite clear that Chuck Schumer, if right here, is ambivalent on the war. He's on the side over here of yes, let's attack Iran. And so he was just doing his best to basically like, and you know, to his credit to pretend so that he wouldn't be completely misaligned with the Democratic Party. I mean, this is someone who has voted against the JPC oa. He complained when Trump was actually maybe making a deal with the Iranians that would in some way tough in public and then have a side deal that lets Iran get away with everything. Well, get away with everything. What are you talking about?
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B
Was last summer.
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A
I mean, the reason why Chuck Schumer has not been, has been so slow off the ball here until it turns into a, you know, an obvious disaster. And even then he's a, he's, you know, is because he wanted this war and thought he could get it and still blame Trump.
- [12:33]
B
Oh, and that's the same in the House, we should say too. Gregory Meeks and Hakeem Jeffries could have brought up that war powers vote before the recess and they chose not to because they think they can have it both ways here. One, the Zionist donor class likes this war. And so you can appease them by not slowing the role of this horrible disaster. But two, they think it hurts Trump. So it's a twofer for them. That's their viewpoint. The impacts on our economy and humanity be damned. Or democracy.
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A
Now, here is Trump, like, either just trying to buy time until these other 10,000 troops get to the region, because they planned for this so well. I mean, come on. And the bottom line is, when they bring troops in, the idea that they're going to bring 10,000 troops in and he's going to back out of this seems very aspirational thinking. You know, this is a big commitment. And at one point, it starts becoming like, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. But here he is. Maybe, I mean, you know, the most hopeful part of me thinks, like, okay, maybe if we just, like, play along and nod and grandpa will say, okay, I won, and get out. There's certainly people within his circle, I am sure, who are saying, you shouldn't do this, but there are also a lot of people in his circle saying, you should do this. And here he is, you know, waffling. And if this sounds like the opening scene to Godfather 2, there's a reason for it. To send eight votes two days ago, and then they added another two. So it was 10 votes. And now today, they gave us, as a tribute. I don't know. I can't define it exactly, but they gave was, I think, out of a sign of respect, 20 boats of oil. Big, big boats of oil going through the Hormuz Strait. And that's taking place starting tomorrow morning. I wonder if. I wonder if there's any relevance to him always saying Hormuz straight as opposed to the Strait of Hormuz. His thing is he misspeaks once and then he just says it a thousand times to make it. I meant to do it that way.
- [15:05]
B
No one here. No one here would understand that. But. But he also. This is a very small side note, but the way he talks about people in the Middle east with this complete Orientalism, he's always talking about how proud they are or how, like, shockingly smart they are, or as a sign of respect, it's just very. It's. You can see why he's underestimated the Iranians or, you know, and people in the Gulf, because he just genuinely doesn't think of them as intelligent as him, which is hilarious, because Iran is clearly winning this here. And part of the problem is, like, they're. If they want to humiliate the United States, they can but the problem is that Trump is going to want some sort of, I don't know, rhetorical victory here. He doesn't want to look humiliated. So Iran's rightly pissed, but they have to play some sort of dance here to give him at least some sort of rhetorical win if they want to avoid the worst of this.
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A
Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that the die is cast. I just don't think you bring in that extra 10,000 troops this late in the game if you think you're not going to use them. And Iran simply cannot afford to not go ahead and charge people as they come through the Strait of Hormuz as a way of showing that there's a price to be paid if you're going to attack the country. But we will see. When is those troops supposed to arrive? Two or three days. Is it
- [16:46]
B
Brian's estimates from last week where we were saying, do you think this is going to happen over the weekend? It was going to take more time for that troop buildup. So you kind of guessed that it's going to happen this upcoming week?
- [16:57]
A
Yeah, yeah. This next weekend would be my guess. But that's just. There's no reason to put any stock in me.
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B
No, I mean, but, but the weekend
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C
is because of the markets and Trump, speaking of stock.
- [17:07]
B
Right, yeah, Trump. Trump is trying to manipulate the markets and there have been some really dumb traders that have gone along with him on this. But that's why the weekend makes the most sense.
- [17:17]
A
In a moment, we're going to be talking to Molly Crabapple, artist, author. She got a new book here. Where We Live Is Our country the Story of the Jewish Bund. First couple words from our sponsors, both of whom are sponsors that I have used for years before they became sponsors. First one is Delete me. Delete Me makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Delete Me does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. I started using this, I don't know, 10, 12 years ago because I didn't want my personal information to be available to people if they spend $5 to find it. And. But there's a lot of reasons, I mean, for obvious reasons, why I did it. But in this era, I could see everybody doing it for that reason. But even more so, what happens with that data broker information? And it's all over the place. 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Fast growing trees.com code majority. Now's the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use majority to save today. Offer valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Check out the podcast and YouTube descriptions for this info. Gonna take a quick break and when we come back, Molly Crabapple, artist and author, new book entitled Here Where We Live Is Our country the Story of the Jewish Bundle. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. It's a real pleasure to welcome to the program. I feel like maybe welcome back. I feel like maybe back on Air America days we, we had her on but Molly Crabapple, artist, author, new book entitled Here Where We Live is Our country the Story of the Jewish Bun. Molly, welcome back to the program or welcome to the program. Thanks so much for joining us.
- [24:20]
D
Oh, my absolute pleasure to be here. Sam,
- [24:26]
A
I love your book for two reasons. One, I mean, I'm really enjoying reading about the history and I think you wrote this in such an accessible way in part because and we'll talk about this, your relationship, your family's relationship to this story or your great grandfather or your grandfather in particular. But it's also so timely. I mean, obviously, you know, particularly in the past couple of years, the question of Zionism has become so prominent in our politics and for a long time, I mean, you know, the biggest part of that story is obviously what's happening to Palestinians, what's happening to Lebanese, what's happening to Iranians. But there's a certain responsibility that Jews feel, in part because of Israel's conflating Judaism and Zionism, to push back on this. And there, there has yet to be sort of like a. A thing that you can be or a sort of like a. That is not just anti Zionist, that there is a sort of like a positive vision for a Jewish anti Zionism. And the bond, you know, sort of like ends up being that answer. Now, you started writing this seven years ago. Let's just talk about the genesis of how you came to this. This really, in many respects, lost history.
- [26:07]
D
Thank you so much for that intro, Sam. Well, I came to the Boond because of my great grandfather, Samuel Rothbard, who was a post impressionist painter. And it might seem a little funny, right, to be so into your great grandparents, but Sam taught my mother how to paint, and my mother taught me how to paint. So I viewed my whole ability to be an artist as sort of this, like, transgenerational gift from him. And he had this body of work that he called memory paintings that showed every aspect of life. In Volkovisk, the small town that he came from, there was the sacred the rabbi reading the Torah on Yom Kippur. There was the profane himself spying on the women in the bathhouse when he was a bad little boy. But there was one painting that I was obsessed with, and it was a young woman, and she had, you know, big Gibson girl hair, a little corseted waist and a long skirt. And she was standing on a twilight street throwing a rock through a window, and her boyfriend was next to her offering her more rocks. And this painting, which he had titled in his own hand was called Itge the Bundest. And so I still remember I was like, maybe I was like 19 or 20 when I saw it, but I was like, bundest. What's that? And that question became the doorway that led me to discover the Jewish Labor Bund.
- [27:33]
A
And we should say Volkswagen. I'm not going to be able to pronounce anything, but it's in, it's Poland. In Poland. All right, so. So you get this idea of like, you know, what is the Bund? And it really is a fascinating history. Before we get to the Bund, let's work up, because the Bund and Zionism or Zionists basically show up almost in the exact same time. I mean, within the same year or so. And talk about the history in Eastern Europe and in Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, that is happening in the run up in the, I guess, you know, 150 years, 100 years or so before we get to the birth of Zionism and the bun, because they're, they're both responses in some respect, or at least elements of it, to what had taken place in terms of the way that Jews were trying to assimilate in certain countries and couldn't.
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D
Well, in the 19th century, the majority of Jews in the world lived inside the borders of the Tsarist empire. And this was by far the worst place in the world to be Jewish. You were, it was. Imagine you had like three different boots stamping on your face. The first was that like all subjects of the Tsar, you had no political rights. You could be sent to Siberia for having a book club. You are living in a country that's run by a royal family that is so inbred that their blood no longer clots and they have to depend on scam hypnotists from Siberia in order to stop this. So you're just like politically repressed Jewish and not. You're also really poor, much poorer than you would have been in Western Europe because again, the inbred hemophiliac royal family is spending all of your money on diamond magical eggs. Okay, but also you're Jewish. And as a Jew, you're part of a racialized minority, which means that you can only live in a certain impoverished swath of land called the Pale of Settlement. Your term of Military conscription is 25 years. You are severely limited into where you can live. Like, you know, what towns you can live in, what jobs you can do. There are quotas for the universities. And as always happens right when a government decides to target a minority, this leads to a general miasma of racism and violence, including these giant mob attacks that were called pogroms. And Jews tried to assimilate. I mean, certain elite Jews tried to assimilate in Russia just like they did in Western Europe. But unlike in Western Europe, where Jews were able to get legal emancipation in the mid 19th century, this was not possible and utterly rejected by the powers that that be in Russia. And so young Jews decided that they had to think of more radical solutions. Now, Zionism and the Jewish labor Bund both come onto the scene in 1897, and they are diametric opposites from the start. Political Zionism is most associated with Theodore Herzl, who was a ritzy Habsburg journalist who wanted to assimilate so badly that he thought all Jews should convert to Christianity. But then he saw the Dreyfus trial, which was when a Jewish army officer in France was falsely accused of spying in a way that everyone knew was fake and sent off to Devil's Island. And just the shock, right, the trauma of that. That in sophisticated, liberated France, this guy who had done everything to assimilate should be reduced to just being a Jew, right? That was enough to convince Theodore Herzl that Europe was just racist, that there was nothing you could do about it. You could not assimilate. You couldn't learn the language real good. You couldn't show your worthiness through social contributions. You just had to get out. Because Europe was racist. And Herzl didn't really care where the Jewish ethnostate he built would be. He was even willing to have it be in Uganda. But he just thought that Jews needed a state. And more importantly, he did not care what means he used to get it. Now, Theodore Herzl launches world Zionism in 1897 at a ritzy casino in Basel, Switzerland, and immediately becomes a superstar. But that same year, another group of young Jews elsewhere is also thinking of a solution to the problem of Jewish persecution in Eastern Europe. So in 1897, a group of 13 young Jewish Marxist troublemakers, all of them with rap sheets, all of them deeply influenced by the revolutionary wave that was bubbling up in Western Europe. They meet in the attic of a rickety safe house in Vilna, and they form something that's called the Jewish Labor Bund. And the Bund was an amazing organization because it was almost like proto intersectional is the only way to describe that in the original meaning of the word. These young Jews realized that the Jewish worker in the tsarist empire was oppressed in two ways. He was oppressed by a worker slaving at a sweatshop for wages so insufficient that his kids would starve to death. But he was also oppressed as a Jew because of these specific laws. And so the Bund wanted his liberation as a Jew as well. They wanted to overthrow the tsar, establish democratic socialism, and also fight for the right of Jews to live beautiful, free, and dignified lives in Eastern Europe, where they'd lived a thousand years.
- [33:48]
A
All right, there's a couple of things I want to just. Let's just start with Pale of Settlement, like, where is that area physically? And how many Jews were in there when it was? Catherine. Right. Sort of like, created that as not quite a ghetto, but sort of like this is the area where you're allowed to be if you're Jewish.
- [34:12]
D
The Pale of Settlement were essentially the westernmost provinces of the Russian Empire. And these were created because in the 1700s, Poland was partitioned. Poland was at that time the home to the world's largest Jewish community. And it was partitioned between Prussia, the Habsburg Empire and the Russian Empire. And as soon as Poland gets cut up, Russia is like, fuck, like, what do we do with all these non Christians? What do we do? And they decide that what they're going to do is that they're going to confine these Jews to the areas where they're already living. They're not allowed to move to, like, St. Petersburg or Moscow, that they're going to limit the jobs they can do. They're going to limit, like, what they do in university, but especially if they're going to just confine them to these western borderlands. And you know, by the time the Bund is created, about a third of maybe not the time, millions of Jews by this point have already fled Russia's western borderlands, mostly for New York City because of the grinding poverty, the constant discrimination, the sense of futurelessness, and also the quotidian violence of living there. And I want to say that you're Talking about maybe 4, like 6, like 6 million Jews, maybe, out of which is like a huge percentage of the Jews in Europe.
- [35:40]
A
And, and was it Alexander the. One of the Alexanders?
- [35:45]
D
Too many Alexanders, Alexander two.
- [35:48]
A
Sort of like ease things up a little bit. And then Alexander iii, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, doing this now from, from, from memory, from, from your book had basically said, like, okay, maybe the plan is one third of the Jews, you stay Jews, one third will convert to Christian and then we'll kill the other third. Which was indicative of like, this was not just about, for these folks. It wasn't just about what religion you were practicing. There was sort of like, like you say, like a racialized element to it. And what, what I found sort of fascinating was that Zionism was a response. Zionism and the Bund were both answers to the same dilemma, which is like, on one hand you had these Zionists who were like, I'm willing to. At least some of them, I'm willing to completely assimilate, but I'm not allowed to. I can't even become Christian, you know, after, you know, the Dreyfus affair. And on the other hand, you have. These would be socialists who. Or socialists who cannot find common acceptance as a, as working people, essentially
- [37:19]
D
from
- [37:20]
A
their Christian fellow workers, because they're Jews, and they have two diametrically opposed responses. And so let's take it from there. After the birth of both of these ideologies. Tell us more about that. The theory of the Bund is that we're going to. We can continue to both. Or tell us the notion of, like, here. I can't remember the Zocite, that concept and what it meant in terms of their socialism, because their desire to stay was also very much tied into this sort of, like, socialist almost internationalism.
- [38:10]
D
So the Boons had an idea that, to me, is so profoundly ethical that it sounds almost obvious. And it's something that I honestly see being lived out in practice every day in New York City, which is that you can have a multicultural, multiracial, democratic socialism. You can fight for a better world with people who are very, very different than you. And you don't have to change who you are. You don't have to change your name. You don't have to start speaking another language. You don't have to believe in a different God. You don't have to change your culture. I mean, this is. I'm essentially describing the Zoran Mamdani coalition over here. But at that time, this idea was revolutionary. What the Bund believed was they believed that especially in a place like the Tsarist empire that had so many different groups of people speaking so many different languages with so many religions, that the only way to create a just world would be to have a country where everyone is allowed to practice their own culture, to be served in their own language, but that it's a democratic, socialist country. They were not separatists. They did not think that Jews had to, like, live in this little isolated group. In fact, they saw themselves as a key part of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which is the party that eventually will give birth to the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. It was just that they also believed that Jews should have an autonomous organization within that party. And not just Jews. They thought, like, Armenians, Finns, Latvians, like, you know, all of the many, many ethnic groups in the Tsarist empire. Because they also thought, you know, we have our own struggles, right? We have the struggle against the legal and practical racism we deal with. And also we have our own culture, and it's awesome, and we're really proud of it. And we think that we deserve beautiful music and literature and theater and cultural support, just like Polish or Russian people do. We think we're not less than them.
- [40:03]
A
And this dynamic, I'm also sort of like interested in. Is the idea of Zionism. Ultimately, people move to Israel and they change their name to sound like more Middle Eastern, I guess.
- [40:21]
D
Biblical. Yeah, Hebrew.
- [40:22]
A
Biblical, Hebrew. I mean, and there is, I mean, and we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit in terms of like in the wake of, of World War II, but even I think prior to that, there is a sense of like a disdain for the sort of peasant, the Russian peasant archetype, as it were. I mean, even to the point where, you know, jumping ahead about 20 years or so, like the Balfour Declaration is a function of some British Jews also. I'm not wholly. But there's a lot of different reasons that brought that about were that they were concerned about Russian peasants, Jews coming to England and sort of making things a little more difficult for them and having these sort of like cousins almost that they were embarrassed by.
- [41:16]
D
Low class cousins. Yeah.
- [41:17]
A
Yes. And, and, and the Bund sort of takes the opposite tack and says, we're not going to eschew Yiddish. We're not going to lose our identity. We're going to embrace it more. And this happens even when they head to the States or some do. So let's track your grandfather. He comes to the States in part because he may have been involved in a shooting or he says he was. I mean, how involved in a shooting? We don't know from your. But that he was involved in a shooting that was again, sort of like in the context of the politics of the day. And he heads to the States in the early 1900s. Take it from there and give us a sense of like, what was happening in the US in terms of the Bund and then back in Poland and Russia.
- [42:21]
D
Well, my grandfather was in some ways a fairly typical example of his generation. He was born, you know, dirt poor in this small town. He apprenticed at a leather tannery, which was a miserable job that would give people anthrax poisoning. And he got involved with the boond for the same reason that many, many young people did, which is that he wanted better labor conditions. Like, he just wanted some time off from work so that he could live.
- [42:50]
A
But we should say one thing I learned from this is that to be clear, his boss was Jewish.
- [42:57]
D
Yeah, his boss is Jewish too.
- [42:59]
A
They. They would give the Sabbath off from Friday night. You get 25 hours from Friday night to Saturday night. But then you had to come back to work Saturday night after the sun comes down.
- [43:11]
D
Exactly, exactly. It was like letter of the religious law of the day of rest, but not the spirit of it, because your Boss is still a capitalist. And that's what he got involved in the boond to fix. He wanted to have Saturday night off from work. Too modest. Desire. But he immediately got swept up into what I almost think of as, like, a teenage rebellion or a young people's rebellion, where he rejected this, like, very strict religious law that he was born into. He started reading, you know, illicit books, revolutionary books, but also just, like, secular books, like Jules Verne. He started hanging out with girls. You know, he broke with, like, the crazy gender segregation of the time. He started getting involved in sabotage. He has drawings of guys, like, burning down these sweatshops or of getting into brawls, strikebreakers. He starts helping guard secret meetings in the woods where they would raise the red flag and sing socialist songs. And eventually, and this is what I found out from my research, he was involved in the shooting of two police officers that were leading a pogrom in Volkovsk during a market day. And I don't know exactly what involved means, but that's what he wrote. And I confirmed the shooting. And very soon afterwards, he was in New York. He was one of many, many young Jews involved in radical movements who ended up in New York City before and immediately after the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. Now, New York at this point was a radical hotbed, and not just for Jews, right? Like the same years that I'm writing about Puerto Ricans are also creating the Puerto Rican flag and launching rebellions against the Spanish. These are the same years that Irish.
- [45:00]
A
In New York.
- [45:01]
D
In New York. In New York, yeah. At the Chimney Corner hall in Wall Street. That's where the Puerto Rican flag is created. There are people from all over the world that are gathering in New York to fight the despotism in their home countries and to build radical networks. And Jews become some of the most passionate participants. By the time that my great grandfather arrives in New York City in 1904, there is already a booming world of Yiddish socialism with its own newspapers, its own, like, street speaker celebrities, its own, you know, labor unions that represent hundreds of thousands of people that are capable of, like, having strikes that bring the whole city to the halt. Eventually, like, within a little over a decade of his arrival, New York Jews will have elected one of the first socialist congressmen in the United States, Meyer London. They will have built a, like, sort of skyscraper called the Forward Building with busts of marks and Engels on the front of it. This is a vibrant, vibrant world that's both reflective of the conditions and what they call der altar Haim you know, the old home, but also is embracing the new freedoms of America, especially the freedom to organize official unions and to contest for state power.
- [46:28]
A
It really, I mean, this is one of the things I really enjoyed about is like the, that a hearing about how radical that era was across the board. I mean, I have some old photos of, of Yiddish posters at protests and labor union protests. But to hear like this was happening for a whole range of countries and folks are sending money back because it's much easier to get a dollar here in the US and send it back. And also just the level of violence if folks aren't familiar with what a program is. You know, you write rather descriptively of like you had many, many Jews who would just, they'd get an arm chopped off, they'd get killed, they'd. There was mass rape. This was just, you just never knew if it would just come to your town, as it were. And so there was a lot of strife. So your grandfather's in New York. What happens then? And now we're like situated just before the world World War I as this is happening. What happens then? Because what is most fascinating to me is how the Bund sort of evaporates in some way over the course of the next 20 or 30 years. That history is buried. I mean it. And it's because it's in contention also with Zionism. And the Zionists want to make sure that there is not an alternative that is at least bandied about,
- [48:11]
D
of course. So to give you kind of a capsule history, there is an attempt at a Revolution in 1905 in Russia. And the Bund is fighting on the barricades. They are leading the charge in Pale of Settlement cities like in Lodz, in, in Odessa. They are fighting not just themselves, but like alongside, you know, the multiracial working class of the Czarist empire as brothers. And then after the this like revolution wave picks up enough to like seriously, seriously threaten the tsarist state. The tsar does like a 1, 2 move. The first thing is he gives like a few, like little concessions, like a powerless parliament that sort of buy off the liberals and they buy off the rich who are done with the disorder. But then he also blames the whole thing on the Jews. And there's a series of what can only be state coordinated pogroms that break out in over 800 cities in the tsarist empire literally the same day as he gives these liberal concessions and these pogroms. Like people think that that means, I don't know, like some people getting roughed up we're talking like 800 people slaughtered in Odessa, like, over a thousand people slaughtered in Kiev. The pogroms are so savage that in New York City, the black press, the New York Age, which is like the preeminent black newspaper of the time, is writing about these pogroms, and they're comparing them to these, like, mass. These mass racist terror murders that are happening in the American South. They're. They're drawing a comparison between the KKK and the Black Hundreds, which was the racist, anti Jewish group in Russia. So these pogroms, which, you know, fellow Christian workers joined in, they devastate the Jewish revolutionary movement, and they really just lead to as many people as possible leaving the czarist empire and trying to move to New York City. Now World War I happens, and it is a disaster for Russia. Millions of people die for literally nothing. You're talking about millions of young men that the Tsar is throwing into a meat grinder, essentially, people who don't even have, like, shoes, who are asked to take the guns off of the dead bodies of their friends. And after a few years of this nonsensical bloodbath, the people of Petrograd, the working women of Petrograd, which is the capital of Russia, they decide, enough. And it's those people, not a political party, but the people who overthrow the czar and who start what's going to be an experiment with revolutionary democracy in Russia that is cut short by the October Revolution. Now, at this time, the Bund is probably kind of at its weakest. Like, if you know a little bit about World War I, you know that Russia lost a lot of territory, and the territory they lost was on their borderlands with Germany and Austria. So tons of Bundists end up in Poland, which for the first time in, you know, like, 160 years, is now an independent country. Other Bundists end up in Russia, where they take part in this democratic experiment, but where the Bund is repressed by the Bolsheviks, just like the Bolsheviks repress all other socialist political parties. But in Poland, the Bund is able to not just rebound, but in some ways and in spite of everything, they create a golden age there. And when I talk about what the Bund was like in Poland, I want to draw a parallel to the Black Panther Party, because I feel like that's the group that they're the closest to. These are two groups of primarily, like, young people from a racialized, oppressed group who are Marxists, who are committed to internationalism and universalism, but are also deeply committed to the Liberation of their own people. Both the Bund and the Black Panther Party would create vast networks of mutual aid, of free breakfast programs, of clinics, of they would militantly fight evictions by corrupt landlords. And both of them were so committed to the idea of self defense through, through force of arms if necessary. Like, it's so funny, like, even the Bund and the Panthers both had like little paramilitary groups wearing cool berets at a slant, marching around and like looking tough and sexy. So in interwar Poland, the Bund creates an alternate world. The they have like youth groups, they have a women's movement fighting for free childcare, they have labor unions, they have summer camps for kids, they have theater troops, they have a sanatorium that's for young slum kids that are at risk of tuberculosis, and they have a militia that defends them. And I also just want to talk a little bit about the atmosphere in Poland at this time, because it's not the same as in the tsarist empire. Poland is a republic, right? It's not something that has a hemophiliac emperor at its helm. But as the 30s drag on, an extremely paranoid and insanely racist form of Polish nationalism comes to dominate the government. Marshall Joseph Pilsudski, who is considered the father of modern Poland, he was not racist. That was not part of his vision. He was authoritarian, but he was not racist whatsoever. But the military guys that took over after his death in 1935, these were people who saw racism as a glue with which they could hold the country together. They were not charismatic war heroes like Pilsudski. They were just puffed up men with medals on their chests and they decided to just lean into anti Jewish racism. They literally were going around the world demanding that France allowed them to ship the entire Jewish population of Poland to Madagascar. They were funding terrorist youth groups in Poland that would throw bombs at Jewish shops while at the same time screaming Jews to Palestine. They wanted to expropriate and expel their entire Jewish population. And so when the Bund is building this world, right, they're also defending it from this savage racism that's backed by the state.
- [54:58]
A
How much of at this point. So if you're talking like the 1930s and the Bund is sort of just about at its heyday, or at its heyday in terms of like, you know, what it's able to create before this new regime comes in, how much the interplay between Zionism and the Bundes ideology, like, give us a sense of that, because it feels like they're competing ideas of what Jews should do in Europe. But it also feels like, and you write about this, Zionists will make common cause with fascist and anti Semitic regimes because Zionism provided a solution to what to do with the Jews. And in some level it feels like then it became self fulfilling. Go back to Palestine's not something that you would say in maybe 1897, but it becomes something that makes some sense, you know, after 1918 to, you know, those people who want to kick the Jews out of their country.
- [56:16]
D
I mean before Balfour, people were saying go back to Palestine. It was just like kind of a racist jeer, not really a political program, but it was just like thing racist said. But yeah, I want to explore how the boon's opposition to Zionism developed. So in the early years before Balfour, Bundists just thought Zionists were smoking the good drugs. They were like, okay, yeah, you're going to make millions upon millions of people move to the Levant and become collective farmers. Sure you will. They literally thought it was a scam by Jewish bosses to distract from the fact that they weren't paying their Jewish workers living wages. And they also found it to be submission to the same bigots who were always marching around screaming Jews to Palestine and throwing bombs into Jewish shops. They were like, this is our home. We were born here, we lived a thousand years and how dare you tell us to leave. But when the Balfour Declaration is signed and when Britain begins its occupation of Palestine, there's another element to their opposition and that is that they see Zionism as a handmaiden of British imperialism. They are ethically disgusted. They're like, you are working with the British Empire which is occupying another people's country which is denying these people the most basic political rights. And furthermore, you are involved in like major land evictions. You're forcing farmers from their homes that they've lived on for, you know, hundreds, maybe a thousand years, just the same way we're getting forced from our homes. They thought this was reprehensible. I mean they were socialists and they believed in human equality and they saw Zionism as essentially antithetical to human equality and solidarity. But also as the Polish government became more insane, Zionists started cutting these really, really messed up deals. The same Polish government that is funding these terrorist youth paramilitaries is giving weapons, money and military training to the three Zionist paramilitaries that are in Palestine and that are murdering Palestinians. During the great Arab revolt of 1936 through 1930, Sahagana, the Irgun and the Stern gang. An absolutely Deranged and psychopathic group all received weapons, money and military training from a Polish government that was murdering Polish Jews. And the Bund was just. They were disgusted and they were horrified. And they continuously refused collaboration with Zionism up until like the very, very darkest days of the Holocaust. But I won't get ahead of myself there. But they repeatedly refused this collaboration because they thought that Zionists were ethically bankrupt.
- [59:10]
A
And you talk about, you know, through those years, a lot of times this came to brawls and there was a. There was a lot of fights between the Zionists and the Bond. And then so moving into World War II, the boon becomes sort of the undergirding or the leadership of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
- [59:39]
D
I wouldn't say that it's a little more complicated, but go on.
- [59:42]
A
Okay, well, they're heavily involved.
- [59:44]
D
Yes, very heavily involved. Yeah.
- [59:46]
A
And so talk about what happens through that period and the relationship and just walk us through that. Sort of like these two competing ideologies. And maybe Zionism at that point is far more dominant one in terms of like what in particularly as the Holocaust continues, the idea of leaving for Palestine becomes, or at least leaving becomes a lot more obvious of an option. Talk about that. But also, I'm also curious as to what extent socialism played, what role socialism played within the context of Zionism, because it feels like they're part of the Zionist pitch was like, we're going to be. You know, a lot of the kibbutzes were socialist projects. And Israel feels like at its founding was far more socialist than it is today. And how much of that was a function of actual ideologies that exist in Zionism? And how much was it a way in which to peel off Bundes?
- [61:08]
D
Okay, so these are two pretty big questions. So I'm just going to start with like a capsule history of the Bund and the Holocaust. The Bund in The summer of 1939 sweeps the Polish municipal elections. It is by far the most popular Jewish party in Poland. It wins the majority of Jewish seats in every major city in Poland. They are at their very peak. Germany invades on September 1, 1939. And when Germany invades the Polish government, these puffed up military men runs away. They abandon Warsaw. But the Polish Socialist Party, which is the Bund's sister party, they decide to defend the city. And they organize workers brigades where Jewish and Polish workers fight on the barricades of Warsaw with their bare hands, sometimes against panzer tanks. And they are able to hold off the Nazi army longer than most of the country of Poland. And that's a bit of heroism by not just Jewish workers, but also Polish workers, Polish socialist workers that I think deserves to be acknowledged now. Once the Nazi occupation starts, the Bund immediately reconstitutes as an underground. Their leadership by this point has fled east into the part of Poland that will be occupied by the Soviet Union, seeking to, you know, try to lead an underground from there. But their leaders are arrested by the Soviet Union and later killed because socialists never forget a grudge. And there was a conference in 1903 that led to these groups disliking each other. But in western Poland, the part of Poland that was occupied by the Nazis, the Bund reconstitutes as an underground. They set up underground schools. They have an underground Red Cross, they create an underground newspapers that are smuggled around the country with the help of Polish socialist comrades. I found a story of a young Polish socialist woman who literally went to Auschwitz for distributing the Bundest press. They also create a militia that tries to organize like basic self defense. But the power of the Nazis is such that they are able to force Poland's Jews, Warsaw's Jews. Warsaw is the largest Jewish city in the world outside of New York. They're able to force them all into a ghetto. And I also want to note that the Bundest councilman Arthur Ziegelbaum, publicly begged the Jews of Warsaw not to go into the ghetto and told them to fight with their bare hands if necessary. This was something of impossible bravery for you to imagine. Inside the ghetto they created two forms of resistance. One was what I would call almost like a social, cultural survival resistance that was devoted not just to maintaining the life of their members, but to maintaining the memory of who they were. I mean, I sometimes read about, like secret libraries that were carried in people's briefcases because, you know, books were banned. But also they wanted to have an armed resistance. And the truth was, was that the Polish Home army, which was the largest resistance force that would ever exist in occupied Europe, a heroic resistance force, did not believe in arming the Jews in the ghetto until it was basically too late. And even then they gave guns in a shockingly stingy quantity. So the Bund is in this position where they want to do armed resistance. And they want to do it, you know, as part of a Polish socialist movement to liberate the entire country from the Nazi occupier. They want to help liberate Warsaw, not just the ghetto, but their allies are not giving them weapons. Now, at the same time, you have two activists from A Zionist youth movement that's called Azure Habonim. The activists are Antek Zuckerman and Selina Lubetkin. And they get reports about the complete extermination of Jews in Eastern Poland. And they realize pretty early that what's going on here isn't just persecution and massacres. Like a lot of people thought that it's a genocide, that they're going to kill everyone. It's not something that's survivable. And they initially try to unite with the Bund in an armed fighting group and the Bund rejects it because of their political differences. Now what happens then is that in 1942 the Nazis begin to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto. And over the course of several months they ship 90% of the ghetto's Jews to Treblinka where the vast majority of them are murdered. And during the course of this liquidation, the Home army does nothing to stop it and they don't give Jews weapons to defend themselves. And the Bund works with their comrades in the Socialist Party to actually get one of their guys to go undercover on the route to Treblinka and to expose the truth about the Holocaust. The Bund writes the first major Jewish report of the Holocaust and has it smuggled to London by a Polish Home army courier. In a set of dentures he has. They basically reveal the truth of the Holocaust to the world. And the Western world, as we all know, does not do anything. They have their own war aims. And so after that, with almost everyone in the Ghetto killed, with most of the boons, adult leadership either dead or in hiding, Bundists, Zionist socialists, as you said, and Communists unite. And they form a group called the Jewish Combat Organization, which will be the primary group in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the first urban revolt in occupied Europe. There's also another group that's called the Jewish Military Union. That's right wing Zionist because you know, there were some political divisions that were too much to cross. But yeah, the, the Jewish Combat Organization launches the Warsaw Ghetto revolt and is able to hold off the Nazis for six weeks with nothing, with like literally 50 pistols and some homemade landmines and light bulbs that they filled with acid.
- [67:33]
A
And wasn't it a, a, a Bundist who, who went to, to London. Yes, at one point to warn everybody about the Holocaust and I think like self immolated or committed suicide at the very least, if I recall correctly, because no one was listening to him.
- [68:00]
D
Yes. So this was Arthur Ziegelbaum. So Arthur Ziegelbaum is the same city councilman who begged the Jews not to go into the ghetto. He was able to flee from Poland both. So first he goes to New York, and then he sails to London as a delegate to the Polish government in exile. He's the only Bundest, one of the only two Jews on this governmental body, which is, again, a government in exile. And it is a miserable experience for him. You literally have these ministers in exile, in this government in exile, debating about how when the war is over, they're going to put all the Jews in a ghetto and ship them to Palestine like the problems had not been reformed, have not been fixed. And Arthur Ziegelbaum is one of the first people who gets Jan Karski's report about the Holocaust. And he does everything he can to publicize it. He tries to, like, speak at a thousand things. He's constantly sending out newspaper things. He's trying to meet with Churchill. He's getting blown off. Basically, no one cares. He's trying to beg the Polish government in exile to tell the Home army to, you know, try to rescue the Jews. And they're just like, nope, not part of our military plans. And then he gets this message from Jan Karski, from his Bundest comrades who are inside the ghetto, where they tell him, you know, sometimes us inside the ghetto, we hate you for being in the free world. And we think that if we're dying here, you should die there. Go and starve yourself with all the other Jewish leadership in London. Go to starve yourself to death in front of Parliament until someone does something. And when Arthur Ziegelboi hears the reports that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising has been crushed and the last Jews in the ghetto have been murdered, he swallows poison as an act of protest, and he leaves a note making it very clear that he's doing this to protest the world's indifference to the genocide.
- [70:05]
A
So let's turn to that question of, like, of Zionism, absorbing some or coming the relation between Zionism and socialism at that time. And how much of that was to appeal to Bundes? How much of it was organic? Walk us through that.
- [70:29]
D
Well, I think, first of all, it's important to note that while almost all forms of Zionism are the same from the Palestinians point of view, you know, they're all built on ethnic cleansing at their core. That there were many different Zionist movements. So you had Zionist movements like the one led by Zev Jabotinsky that openly admired Mussolini and where he would call himself Il Duce and where his, you know, boys would wear brown shirts that they were these were fascist movements. And I don't mean that I'm not being like histrionic. I mean they would have called themselves fascist movements. At the time you had Zionist groups that were like very rich and bourgeois and maybe even didn't think that they personally should leave like their beautiful apartments in New York, but they thought that the broke ass Eastern European Jews should leave to go to Palestine. And then you had Zionist movements that were socialist. And with this you're talking about groups like Polai Tzion or you know, Labor Zionism. And they had kind of a crazy idea. Their idea was like that Jews couldn't be normal in the Diaspora because they weren't allowed to like work in big manly industries like steel mills and you know, develop like good hammer swinging muscles or whatever. And so for Jews to be like a normal people, they had to move to their own state. There would be Jewish socialists and Jewish capitalists and the Jewish socialists would overthrow the Jewish capitalists and make socialism. And like it's quite batty. Like when you read Bear Borichev stuff early on, he literally is using Liberia as a model for how great things are going to be between Jews and Palestinians. He's like, well they're our cousins so it'll be like, you know, the same as Liberia where things are so great between the like African American settlers and the crew people that they colonized these. It's quite daffy. But when what Libra Zionism means in practice in Palestine is a little bit different because Boruchev like didn't go to Palestine, he's just writing pamphlets. What it means is that you have people like David Ben Gurion, the first leader of Israel and a lifetime boomed antagonist who is creating and leading groups like the Histadrut, which is the Jewish labor union, which on one hand is ostensibly socialist, the other hand it is built to keep Palestinians out of the labor market. It is a group that is just as discriminatory as any whites only union in the US and just as discriminatory as the Polish unions that were keeping Jews out of the labor market in Poland. Socialist Zionism was always racist. I mean one of the things that I found in my research, like I couldn't believe it was I was reading. Hillel Cohen is a great Israeli historian. His book 1929 which is Historiography of the 1929 Riots. And he has interviews with these men who are in the Haganah, which is the Jewish socialist paramilitary who were bragging about how in the 1920s they would kidnap Jewish women who were dating Arab Men, and they would, like, sexually torture them as punishment for dating Arab men. Like, these groups, even though, you know, they claim that they were socialists and even maybe, like, the kibbutz is socialist in and of itself. These were also, like segregationist groups.
- [73:54]
A
It's fascinating. Let's just take it to the. To the present. I mean, the Bund, essentially, or
- [74:07]
D
before
- [74:07]
A
we take to the president, like, what. What was the last sort of, like, that we heard from the Bond? I know there's, like, maybe vestiges now, but, like, when was the. Was it essentially the Holocaust that ended the sort of real presence of the Bund anywhere? And what. Fill us in on, like, the history of the Bund, you know, from the World War II till now. And then I just want to talk about the relevance of that history.
- [74:41]
D
Well, The Holocaust kills 90% of Polish Jews, but that still means that there's 300,000 Jews who survived. And, you know, these are people of every possible political disposition, you know, and none. And the Bund tries to reconstitute after the war. However, after the war, Poland has not been cured of this racism problem. And in fact, Polish nationalists murder a thousand Jews after the war, including a particularly vile incident in Kielce where dozens of young Jews are essentially, like, burned alive in an apartment complex. This leads to a mass flight out of Poland by Polish Jews into displaced persons camps in the part of Germany that's occupied by America. And in these camps, Jews apply for visas to Western democracies, not just to America, but primarily to America, and they are rejected. And tell me if this sounds like a very familiar story about refugees in camps that we have seen very, very recently. Meanwhile, while they're rotting in these camps, the Zionist movement very quickly takes control of the camp administrations. And this means that they control, like, what meals people get, what jobs they get, where they live, you know, basic things of life. And they use this power to convince, but also to coerce people into signing up to go to Palestine and to join the Haganah. Because everyone knows that there's going to be a war for the future of Palestine. And the Bund is forced to liquidate in Poland by the communist dictatorship. They are essentially beaten and bullied into silence in these camps. And also the hypocrisy of the Western democracies is intensely destructive to their idea of human solidarity, because the Bund, their whole belief was about solidarity across difference. And when that solidarity is betrayed by governments that claim to speak in terms of democracy and of human rights, that is a crushing thing. And that is something that provides the space for violent supremacist ideologies to flourish. The Bund was able to survive in the US but not as a political organization. It was essentially a small group for, you know, Holocaust survivors and their family and their family members to, you know, to support each other, to try to pass this culture on to their children. You know, they set up like a summer camp, they had socialist summer schools, but they just got smaller and smaller every year. And until, yeah, that's what they were. They became a, like a dwindling group of old people. But they did play a huge role in the Yiddish language revival and they spent great resources compiling histories of their party that I used to write this book. Like they. Even though they had lost the power they had in Poland, because they had lost their country and their families and their milieu, even though they had lost that, they still planted the seeds for their own rediscovery.
- [78:04]
A
Let's talk about that. Because it feels like I certainly in my lifetime, I mean, there's never been a more appropriate time for the emergence of a democratic, socialist, aligned or sort of like based anti Zionist movement amongst Jews than today. I mean, I mean, just, I don't think, period, I don't even have to confine it to my lifetime, although that's rather long. But that, like, this seems to be like the moment for the Bund. I mean, that's why I think for me, what I found so exciting about reading your book and learning this history was the idea of an affirmative political project that rejects Zionism on affirmative grounds as well as obviously what Zionism has wrought. And so, like, what. Just talk about that notion. And you know, your book is coming out in a week and I want to encourage everybody to buy the book. I also want to let members know that we're going to make a decent amount available copies of your book for free and we're going to send out an email to members over the next week so they can redeem those. Because I really do think this is such a perfect history for people to be aware of at this time. Particularly, you know, I mean, broadly for folks who are, you know, ideologically aligned, but also for young Jews and for Jews my age whose Judaism was so wrapped up their understanding of their own, Judaism was so closely identified with Zionism and where there's real danger in that Judaism being conflated with Zionism. Now, I think that this is just a wonderful history to have available to us now.
- [80:30]
D
Thank you. Well, I think that there's two reasons that this book is so, so relevant right now. And one, I want to speak to everyone. We are plunging into the most idiotic fascism and bloodshed that I have ever seen in my lifetime. And I also am not young. And the more I see this disgusting descent into war and ethno nationalism, the more convinced I am that the only thing that can save us is democratic socialism and human solidarity across difference. And that is the ethos that the Boones built their lives on and they fought to the death for. And I think it's really important for all of us who believe in human solidarity, all of us in the left, to seek examples of our valiant ancestors. But for Jews, I want to say something specific. The worst thing that Zionism did was the mass murder that they wrought against Palestinians, against Lebanese, against the entire region. But another crime that they did was that they stole our history, they colonized our history. And they made it seem that everything that happened in the Diaspora was just the story of weak Jews being murdered because they were weak and that the only salvation for us was to be a big, strong Israeli Zionist, bravely and strongly oppressing Arabs. And this is a lie. And I think that this is the time for us to rediscover our ancestors, the people who fought for freedom, for justice, for the better and more beautiful world, as they call it. And I want to invite young Jewish people, you do not have to reject being a Jew because you reject the disgusting ideology of Zionism. You have a history and you have a heritage to be proud of. And I want to invite you to embrace that.
- [82:17]
A
It's really well said. And again, we're going to make some books available because I really am so both impressed with the work, but really believe that that is a huge component of what needs to happen now, at least in terms of, of Jewry outside of Israel and outside of Zionism, to push back on and to reclaim that heritage so that it can't be used in the way that Zionists use it. Molly Crabapple. The book is here, where we live as our country. The Story of the Jewish Bundle. We will put a link to that. The book is coming out next week. I want to encourage people to get the book. If you're even thinking about it, buy a copy. I would love this book to get, you know, up.
- [83:18]
B
Give it to your relatives.
- [83:19]
D
Yeah, give it to your relatives, the ones that are wrong too. Give it to everyone you know who's wrong as well.
- [83:23]
A
I love a passive aggressive book, honestly. And for those of you who, you know, can't afford it, we will have some available those emails will be going out later this week. But Molly Crabapple, thanks so much for coming on. Good luck with this. I think it's a really important thing and hopefully we can have you back, you know, in the months to come to talk about Bundes meetings happening in New York or Milwaukee or Miami or wherever it is across the country. That would be great. I would love to hear about that.
- [84:00]
D
I would love that. Sam, thank you so much. Thank you.
- [84:03]
A
All right, folks, once again, we will put a link to that Molly Crabapple, thank you so much.
- [84:09]
D
That rock the rock so much, truly.
- [84:13]
A
All right, folks, we're going to take a break, head into the fun half. I'm sure, I'm sure that will be in audiobook. Yeah.
- [84:22]
B
And I know we're getting a lot of IMs about that being a best of and I'm sure that's going to be at the top of lists.
- [84:28]
A
Yeah. Very excited about that. And again, we will send an email out to members if we have any left over after members request it. But if you can afford it, go and purchase this book. Pre sales will dictate how much acclaim and like, you know, it becomes a New York Times bestseller. Yeah, it will build a momentum on its own, but it's. The history is so, it's so submerged
- [85:00]
B
or it's so large.
- [85:03]
A
Yeah, yeah. And important. I mean, you know, there was a lot of reason for the, for the Zionists to sort of like fight this ideology. And I think it's just, it's great. I mean, she's, you know, seven years in the making this book, and it's also fascinating. It's also such a easy read because it almost, it almost reads like, you know, historical fiction because her grandfather was such in the middle of all this and just the way that she sort of discovered it. And it's really, it's a fascinating read. She's also like, just also an incredibly interesting person who's been involved in all sorts of important political movements and fights over the past couple of decades now. And her artwork is also amazing. So you should check that out. So very happy to have had her on. I guess we're gonna head to the fun half. Just a reminder, it's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a member. Join the MajorityReport.com when you do, you not only get the free show, but you get the free show free of commercials and you get to ims on the, on the fun half. And this week we're, you know, for. We don't have enough for all our members, but we will be giving away a lot of books of Molly Crabapple's book about the Bundes. It is on audio, it is pre ordered says Noel and it is narrated by the author.
- [86:53]
C
Oh yeah, I was gonna ask, does she read it?
- [86:55]
A
Yeah. Also just coffee co op, fair trade coffee, tea, no coffee, hot chocolate. Use my code majority get 10 off just coffee.com, no.co op. Sorry, Matt. What's happening?
- [87:16]
C
Yeah, on yesterday's Left Reckoning, I did another solo show and people have been asking what their favorite tweet of all time has been. And this one probably comes up for me the most by Matrix Reloaded. Who said people on here will tweet anything, quote, charlie Brown had hoes, end quote. No, he didn't. That isn't true. Talked about a couple of things where people just say things that aren't true. Like Emma's compatriot on CNN who said people don't join the military for the benefits, which is just objectively not true. Neither Emma and I joined the military, unlike Brian, but I think categorically can say that's a load of horseshit.
- [87:52]
A
And Brian does everything for the benefits. Yeah, I can't get out of bed unless somebody's giving me something. I literally had to step out in the middle of the show to talk to my VA doctor and that makes the whole reason I was in the military.
- [88:10]
C
And yeah, also people talking bollocks, as the Brits say. Bill Maher said that every war Israel's ever fought, including the present conflict that we have in the Middle east has been defensive. So that's the high level thinking.
- [88:24]
A
That's fascinating. That is quite a. Was it him or Mark Twain who said that?
- [88:28]
C
Yeah, it was the anti imperialist Mark Twain.
- [88:31]
B
I think maybe in the fun half I'll tell some stories from my CNN appearance on Friday. It was pretty funny. We all need to play those clips. People can find them. But you know, just some interactions with the Republicans on the panel that I found a little bit.
- [88:44]
C
Just say stuff.
- [88:45]
B
Maybe I'll just say really quickly. The guy to my left, Tim, I'm forgetting his last name, he's a Republican, like in House at cn. I kind of almost appreciate him because he's clearly doing it for the entertainment value of it. But there was a guy and he was telling me in the commercial break that online they're calling him MAGA Milk Dud, which I thought was pretty funny. And he said he thought it was funny. So I'm sure he doesn't mind me sharing that. But the Republican across Across from me. Okay, well, I don't care. The Republican across from me, like, worked for Bush and he really hated me. Like it wasn't like on for. For TV purposes. And then in the commercial break, I said something to him like, you, you work for Bush, right? And he was like, yeah. I was like, oh, there's no wonder you're so in favor of these illegal wars. And he looked at me like with such a seething rage. And he was pretty quiet for the rest of the show. And I. I felt. I felt like that was an okay moment in my life.
- [89:48]
A
Good job F that guy.
- [89:50]
B
Yeah. I mean, I just. If it made him a little bit uncomfortable about his past support for the Iraq war, that was okay with me. By me.
- [89:58]
A
That is. Honestly, that is. You should get a medal. Just anybody you can shame off air or on air. I think about that is helpful. Yeah.
- [90:06]
C
Oh, just one more thing on my plug. I'm trying to get to 10,000 followers on Instagram.
- [90:11]
A
Me too.
- [90:12]
C
Because Brian told me you can start posting links for that. If you don't and you pay for the check mark, it's like $40 a month.
- [90:19]
A
$40 a month.
- [90:20]
C
It is hilarious how much they cost for like above the even. The lowest level where you don't even get the ability to share links is like $15 a month.
- [90:29]
A
If I. Here's what I will promise. If I get to 10,000 for followers, I don't know how many I have, I will learn how to post things on Instagram.
- [90:38]
C
Don't let Sam beat me to.
- [90:40]
A
All you have to do is post one facing video and you'd have a hundred thousand followers.
- [90:44]
B
Yeah, you just don't post anything.
- [90:45]
A
I don't know how to. Brian's supposed to be teaching me and he hasn't done it because I haven't dangled some reward in front of. Over here. Pay to play over here. I try to argue, but I actually 100 agree. What's in it for me, Sammy? Yeah, it wasn't part of the job. I don't think that was in the job description. Where's my 20 big boats filled with oil? All right, well, listen, we're gonna put a link to the Penguin House. Penguin Random House link where they give you an opportunity to purchase the pre order the book. Powell's is on there. Bookshop.org Hudson Booksellers, Barnes and Noble Books, a million, Amazon, Target, Walmart. I don't think it matters where you buy it from in terms of like pre sales. They all. It all goes to be counted so that's good, but so check that out again. If you're a member, we're going to make a bunch available for free for you. If you're. But if you, if you can afford to support the book, do so. By all means. We'll see you in the fun half. In the break, Brian's going to show me how to work Instagram because I have a silver dollar in my pocket. See the fun half? Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second already. Fun Hack Emma, welcome to the program. Hey, Fun Hack. Matt. Fun. What is up, everyone? Fun Hat. No M. You did it. Fun Hat.
- [93:03]
B
Let's go, Brandon.
- [93:04]
A
Let's go, Brandon. Fun Crap. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.
- [93:14]
D
Fundamentally false.
- [93:15]
B
No. I'm sorry. Women.
- [93:17]
A
Stop talking for a second and let me finish.
- [93:19]
B
Where is this coming from? Dude?
- [93:21]
A
But, dude, you Want to smoke this? 7A.
- [93:25]
B
Yes.
- [93:28]
A
Me. This thing.
- [93:31]
B
Yes.
- [93:34]
A
Is this me?
- [93:36]
D
Is it me?
- [93:37]
A
It is you.
- [93:41]
C
Hello?
- [93:42]
A
It's me. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?
- [93:50]
B
Sports.
- [93:51]
A
We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to go start like libertarians.
- [93:56]
C
They're so stupid.
- [93:57]
A
Though common sense says of course.
- [93:59]
B
Gobbledygook.
- [94:00]
A
We nailed him.
- [94:02]
B
So what's 79, 21 challenge man.
- [94:05]
A
Tig quivering. I believe 96. I want to say 857. 210.
- [94:09]
D
35.
- [94:09]
B
501.
- [94:10]
A
1/2. 3, 8, 9. 11. For instance.
- [94:14]
B
$3,400. $1,900. 5, 4.
- [94:17]
A
$3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game. Actually.
- [94:22]
B
You're making me think less.
- [94:23]
A
But let me say this. You call it satire. Sam goes satire on top of it all. Yeah. My favorite part about you is just
- [94:32]
B
like every day, all day, like everything you do.
- [94:35]
A
Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.
- [94:45]
B
It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.
- [94:48]
A
Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I, I, I don't know, but you
- [94:55]
D
should know,
- [94:57]
C
people just don't like to entertain ideas anymore.
- [95:00]
A
I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it.
- [95:07]
B
I do love that.
- [95:09]
A
Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump.
- [95:12]
C
I'm losing it, bro.
- [95:15]
A
Two o', clock, we're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to gulag.
- [95:22]
B
Outrageous.
- [95:23]
A
Like, what is wrong with you?
- [95:26]
D
Love you.
- [95:27]
C
Bye.
- [95:29]
A
Love you. Bye. Bye.