← Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Unholy: Two Jews on the News
The Battle Among Republicans over Jews and Israel — with J. Oliver Conroy
01:07:19
A new bonus episode for premium subscribers is out! Find it in your feed. If you have a relationship in your life that’s been strained by the events of the last two years, why not let celebrated therapist Orna Guralnik see if she can help? unholy@unholy-media.com unholy@unholy-media.com Watch us on YouTube: Follow us on social media and join Patreon to get more of Unholy: https://linktr.ee/unholypod Yonit and Jonathan are joined by journalist J Oliver Conroy for a no-holds-barred examination of surging antisemitism on the American right - much of it focused on Israel. At the heart of it: Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist whose brand of antisemitism and hate is finding traction in places few expected. Who is he, why does he matter, and what does his rise say about the shifting fault lines of US politics?
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- [00:00]
A
Disharmony hits Eurovision with Israel at the center. One of the kibbutzim attacked on October 7 makes a big decision and a conversation about rising antisemitism on the American right. It's unholy. I'm Jonathan Friedland in London.
- [00:19]
B
And I'm Yanit Levy in Tel Aviv. Unholy. Two Jews on the news. I'm trying to restrain myself, but I'm gonna have to talk about the weather again. Okay? So you're gonna have to sit through this, Jonathan, but it's been a bit of a stormy Thursday today because the storm named Byron, which I like a lot, being the English lit degree of holder among the two of us, and an Englishman as well, probably likes Byron as well. So the storm has hit Israel, and perhaps because we're addicted to drama, it's been big news here. I mean, the sky is gray, there's thunder, pouring rain. And so the headline I'm reading you from ynetnews.com, storm Byron set to unleash torrential rain across Israel. Quote, tel Aviv won't be fully protected. End quote.
- [01:26]
A
It's all right. I shouldn't laugh because I'm sure it's very, very serious. This sort of rain is what we here call Thursday or Wednesday or Tuesday, maybe sometimes Friday. It's a routine experience for us. But I love the idea. I mean, in a way, it's. It's sort of touching because it's so rare for you to get a big downpour. This is really very ordinary in Northern Europe where I am sitting. But what's the prepared thing? Like, what's the preparation that Israeli should have made for this that they haven't?
- [01:57]
B
I mean, so the interesting thing, I had a friend call me from New York telling me this story how it's like minus 8 degrees there, and she's calling her sister, and her sister is saying, I'm preparing for a big storm. And she looks at the weather channel. It's like 20 degrees in Tel Aviv. So, yes, the whole thing with the storm was that it's going to be a lot of rain in a very short period of time. You know, we're. We're here, we're still surviving it, but it's. I should say it's a bit of a respite from the usual news. So everyone is very focused on this storm. I was just loving the name given by the Greeks, by the way. It was their turn to choose a name for the storm.
- [02:35]
A
I never knew how that worked, actually. I feel very attached to this storm because My publishers here in Britain is John Murray, which is such an old publisher. They were the publisher of Lord Byron. So, I mean, it's good lineage. Don't you think so?
- [02:49]
B
Very nice. If we want to connect it. I think the early Zionists had a very strong connection to the romantic movement. I'm not making this up. It is true, but not my. Who's your favorite romantic movement writer, Jonathan? Is it Lord Byron?
- [03:05]
A
Well, I'm gonna say Byron simply because of the. But no, William Blake obviously would be right in there as well.
- [03:13]
B
The great Mary Shelley girl, myself.
- [03:15]
A
Okay. I mean, definitely in there. No, the great hymn of English romanticism is of course called Jerusalem, I mean, which is one of those very neat linkages between our two countries. But talking about the weather is obviously England's and Britain's national pastime. So I'm very glad to see Israelis are coming on board and realizing the joy of talking about the weather.
- [03:35]
B
But I'm glad you've been interested. I just will tell you, answering your question about the unpreparedness is that the director of the Yarkon Drainage and Rivers Authority said that no city can withstand 100 millimeters of rain in 24 hours. And if this happens in Tel Aviv, it will be a catastrophic event. We cannot fully protect the city. So let's hope we're not heading towards that. But that was where the quote Israel, you know, Tel Aviv protected will come from.
- [04:00]
A
And joking apart, if a city is not prepared, things can obviously happen. So, you know, it's like Americans mock Britain's and other Europeans actually mock Britons about snow because this country totally unprepared for snow. It doesn't happen that often. And each time it does happen, you know, the Germans or the Swiss or whatever just go, huh, two inches of snow. It's nothing, you know. So I relate the same. Huh.
- [04:22]
B
You gave me basically just now.
- [04:24]
A
Yeah, it's. It's an international. Huh. We have some business to transact.
- [04:29]
B
We.
- [04:29]
A
We need to tell our listeners about something very exciting that we're. It's kind of experimental.
- [04:34]
B
I would say to boldly go where no news podcast has gone before. Do you like that it's from a science fiction program. Perhaps you've done some.
- [04:41]
A
I did get the reference. Of course. No early Star Trek. By the way, I was a fan of first series the Willem Shatner. Love that, love that. It's afterwards I lost interest. But the OG Star Trek.
- [04:54]
B
So Patrick Stewart did not do it for you, but William Shatner did.
- [04:58]
A
Correct. Anyway, we're wondering who Englishman Are you? He's Scottish, obviously, isn't he? Patrick Stewart? Maybe not. The name suggests it. Anyway, look, we're really getting very, very diverted.
- [05:09]
B
So Emma Galnik. Yes.
- [05:12]
A
Tell us about her and what she's going to do.
- [05:13]
B
So what we've decided, since the war seems to be over, we've finally decided to embark on an idea that we've wanted to do for a very long time. And we'll call it, for now, a working title, Listeners Therapy. We've had so many people come up to us from the unholy community and beyond, right. Talk about their arguments that they've had with their families. It's been a real tumultuous two years that kind of shook up and even broke up relationship relationships inside families between friends over Israel and Gaza. I mean, you and I obviously have had our difficult moments at times and we decided to recruit an expert. Dr. Orna Goralnik is a clinical psychologist at the Trauma Studies program at nyu. She teaches there. She's the star of a critically acclaimed Showtime docu series called Couples Therapy. And we kind of wanted to use her expertise very aligned with our thinking. By the way, when you hear, you know, she talks about active listening and not being judgmental, but being curious, all of these things. What we would ask our listeners is to please write in and send your any kind of conflict resolution inside your family between friends that you want solved. And she would do that for us on air, so to speak. I mean, she will talk with the couples and try to solve whatever ails them. We will say what our email is, Jonathan, I think that's your role.
- [06:29]
A
Yes, it is. Unholy. Holy hyphen media.com so unholy@unholy-or hyphen media.com I was just going to say that Orna Gowny, obviously known to people, viewers around the world for this show, Couple Therapy. We are, as you explained, looking for couples in the broadest sense, meaning pairs of people who are, you know, it can be grandmother and grandson, it can be father and daughter. It can be any kind of combination, siblings, two friends, myself, it can be two friends. It can be any relationship that has been under strain because of the events of the last two plus years. You know, I know myself, people have told me about, you know, brothers who actually were not talking and then found themselves talking again because of this conflict. In fact, in that particular case, it was because of unholy. They both listened to unholy living abroad. Not. And they weren't. They had got to the point where they couldn't talk about this subject. And they brought, you know, this brought them together in conversation. We would now like to do that with Orna dispensing her expertise and her very, you know, well tuned ear to those dynamics.
- [07:45]
B
And we will emphasize that whoever we choose will be on the actual episode. So we will listen to them and listen to their story and they will tell it to us and tell it to Orna. So, you know, that entails being on our episode, of course.
- [07:58]
A
Yes, exactly. It will be your voices. We won't be talking about you. We will hear you. And the reference, you called it Listener Therapy. That's a reference, of course, to our episode we did very early On, I think November 2023 called War Therapy. And people do still respond to that. So unholy@unholy media.com I should just fact check myself. Patrick Stewart is actually English. You were right from Yorkshire in England. To me it sounded very scary.
- [08:26]
B
What did you say just then?
- [08:27]
A
Yes, I've said it before. Your need. I know you were right about him being English. He's not Scottish, so. But I still didn't watch him in Star Trek, so I don't know how good you can feel, Sir Patrick.
- [08:38]
B
I feel very good about myself.
- [08:40]
A
Now, shall we talk about this event, which is very easy, like our talking about the weather, very easy to dismiss as the sort of fluffy stuff. But I think it's becoming important and serious, which is Eurovision. The number of countries now boycotting the Eurovision song contest for 2026 has reached five. Iceland joining Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and the Netherlands in saying it will not take part in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest over Israel's continuing participation in the competition. Just last week there was a meeting of the European Broadcasting Union and they decided actually not to table the vote that they were going to have about whether Israel could participate or not, which means, in effect, Israel continue. And these five national broadcasters have decided they will not take part as a result. Just before we plunge into it, just explain what I think, because Americans and others perhaps don't follow this. Eurovision is a very big deal. I mean, in a way that a massive sporting boycott of the Olympics or of the World cup would be a very big deal. Obviously North America is not part of it, but Australia is, you know, Europe, a very expanded definition of Europe. Many, many countries take part. And annually it is just a very big showbiz event. Initially it was sort of an object of mockery. Still is a bit for being super kitsch, super camp. But it had, it brings, you know, tens, hundreds of millions of people as an audience. And this issue of a boycott, in a way, the cultural boycott of Israel, it's hard to think of a bigger stage it's had than this. So that tee up. Why I think it's, you know, worthy of conversation.
- [10:30]
B
Yeah. I mean, first of all, it is, as you said, it's more than music, it's politics as well. And of course, Israel was very concerned that if indeed it would be barred from participating in the Eurovision, that would mean a lot of other things. Right. It's a slippery slope that can mean things for, for sports tournaments and things like that. I find it really interesting that the war is over and yet this is continued. I think there are many people who thought and perhaps hoped, including here in Israel, or maybe particularly here in Israel, that if this ends then we will see the end of these kinds of boycotts. The focus would move elsewhere. It's not so, as you mentioned, five countries. To me, what is interesting, first of all, the responses here, of course, were from either Dana International, who won the Eurovision, saying that this is the attempt to boycott Israel is insulting in the way that Israel tries to. She talked about the gay community, how liberal Israel is relative to other nations. You had Alon Ohel, who was held by Hamas for more than 700 days, saying music is supposed to unite people. It's not supposed to be something made into this kind of incitement against Israel. To me, what I find very interesting, I read the line, Iceland wanted the EBU to exclude Khan. Khan is Israel's public broadcaster and at the same time that we're having this conversation, Khan is almost fighting for its life when hit by Netanyahu's government's attempt to curtail its budget. So everyone thinking about Israel as this sort of monolith and everyone agreeing with, with the government and whatever the government is doing, you have to think about the fact that there are many Israelis, including, you know, in different broadcast networks that think otherwise and the fact to that you want to boycott them is not the, I think, way to move forward in any possible direction.
- [12:21]
A
So obviously it's puzzling to Israel, Israel supporters who think, look, the ceasefire, surely this is all over now. I think what the boycotters would say is there is still killing going on. The estimate is more than 350 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli action since the ceasefire and that Israel is obviously, as part of the ceasefire deal, still has a presence in 50 plus percent of the Gaza Strip and therefore it's still continuing. And only when those things are wound back will they drop their campaign. I don't know, because they're not really explaining that case. But you know, my guess, if you ask them as to why this continues and the ceasefire doesn't appear to have made a difference, that probably, you know, maybe would be their response. We talked about this just the other day. How so often boycotts, cultural boycotts, academic boycotts, they so often run into exactly this wall, which is the people they end up boycotting because it always has to be a specific person. You can't just say imprint or institution. It so often ends up boycotting or punishing the very people who are should be seen as allies of those who want to see change in Israel or a different line on the Israel Palestine conflict. You know, I've mentioned that before, partly because they performed at our live show OI Favoi, this London based band that plays kind of world music, a sort of fusion of klezmer and Middle Eastern music that they ran into, you know, a sort cancellation situation over their Israeli singer. And the point they make, not that they, this should make a difference, but what the point they make is, you know, their singer happens to be someone who, you know, every other, every weekend was there at those anti war protests, those protests demanding an end to the war. It just so often ends up this way, partly because who is it who's involved in culture, who is it that's at the leading edge of culture? It will so often in every society be people who are more dissenting, more liberal. That's just the nature of who is, you know, involved in art. So this is yet another example of that. I agree with you about the striking thing being about this being the fact that it's coming even after the ceasefire. The organizers, the European Broadcasting Union themselves postponed the vote that they were due to have about Israel's participation because of the ceasefire. They themselves thought this is now as it were, if not moot, it is at least kind of on hold. They postponed the vote and it's because this vote didn't happen that these others have taken part. It does raise a really interesting question of when will this ever end? Because if the ceasefire means does not bring a pause in this kind of activity, is this going to then just be kind of permanent, even though the boycotters are saying it's because of what happened in Gaza. So is it going to be like this retrospective boycott? Just one other thing. The boycotters cite as precedent the exclusion of Russia from the Eurovision Song Contest ever since the invasion of Ukraine. And they and their position is that obviously that war is ongoing. So you can see why Russia would still be excluded. Yes, but I thought this was very telling.
- [15:30]
B
And of course, Russia started the war, which Israel didn't. Right.
- [15:34]
A
Well, this is exactly what I was going to get to this singer, the Austrian singer, who is the current champion, if you like, the winner, because the contest in 26 is going to be held in Vienna because Austria were the previous winner. That's how it works in Eurovision. Again, for our American listeners, it. The hosting nation is always the. The previous year's winner.
- [15:53]
B
I'm sitting there going, why are you explaining this to me? I know this. Yes, of course.
- [15:56]
A
Yeah. So. But it's not big in the States, Eurovision. So the winner, J.J. pich Pietch said this. I am very disappointed that Russia was left out and Israel was left in. They are both bellicose aggressors, which I think is such an interesting word to have used because it just excludes it just om from the account. October 7th and the. You know, we've argued and debated lots about the conduct of the war, but I don't think anybody disputes that the war was not started. The post October 7th war was started by a Hamas attack on Israel that Israel then fought back. So it's really. To me, it's interesting that there's this equation with Russia. They're both aggressors and they should be excluded. It's this thing that a lot of people are cloudy on this, on the facts of what happens in this conference.
- [16:50]
B
Cloudier don't like to think, is this the opportunity for us to say that Israel is also extremely good at Eurovision? I mean, we won four times. Just mentioning that Iceland, for example, never won. Just thought I'd throw that in. But Israel won four times. And in fact, if I could just make this claim, I think in recent years, we were extremely. We were extremely good at Eurovision. I mean, the songs are great. Remind whoever managed to forget this. Yuval Rafael survived. October 7th. This still didn't prevent many people from trying to boycott Israel when she appeared on the Eurovision stage last year. But I think one of those songs was definitely good enough to even win either Edin Golan with Hurricane or her song. But that didn't happen because of, you know, Israel's political situation in the world. So we should also say that we're very good.
- [17:37]
A
Well, just on that, because this was the other thing.
- [17:39]
B
Are you going to argue that we're very good?
- [17:41]
A
No, no, but the. The success rate is amazing. I mean, if we're going to get into the full weeds of this Ireland, who are really leading the charge to exclude Israel, are alongside Sweden, the only country of 1, 7 times. So the Euros are a really big deal in Ireland and they are really out front on this issue. We talked about Ireland last week in the context of renaming a park in Dublin. So Ireland, it's really becoming definitional of their foreign policy, actually their opposition to Israel. But I just want to say something about Israel's success rate, because that too was the subject of a discussion at this Broadcasting Union meeting. They did not have a vote on excluding Israel, but they did pass, actually, before a new raft of measures is designed, as they put it, to protect the integrity of the vote. This came after suspicions, or more than suspicions actually, that Israel was involved at a sort of governmental level in the public vote. And there was, you know, there was criticism of the fact that Benjamin Netaneo, from his own personal social media account, urged his 1.5 million followers, I think, to vote for Israel. They see the. There were government owned advertising agencies really involved. There was previously the ability individually you could vote 20 times for Israel. It's thought that quite a lot of particularly Jewish communities around the world did that and they've now changed the rules. So you will be able to vote a maximum of 10 times. I think people did think when Israel did unbelievably well, I think it won the public vote in the last contest, only came second overall. People thought, okay, this is organized in some way, so there's an attempt to sort of get at that. I'm picking up your point about the success rate. Even that was under questioning at the last meeting.
- [19:33]
B
Moving on from Eurovision to what is happening here on the ground in Israel. And one of the more, I think, heartbreaking or gut wrenching issues that the different townships and kibbutzim on the an envelope are dealing with is the question of how much, you know, when you want to rebuild your kibbutz, how much do you leave to memory and what do you do with all of the houses that have been either burnt or destroyed in the terrible attack and massacre of October 7? And Kibbutz Berri of this terrible attack, decided after a very sort of. Of difficult, I think, deliberation to essentially demolish all of the homes that were destroyed, barring one, leaving one as a sort of a shrine or a memory for what happened, but then to destroy everything else. This obviously was a very difficult vote. If I remember correctly, it was 196 members who decided to go that way and 146 who decided, who thought differently. But that is what the kibbutz finally decided. One of the members also was a commander in Gaza, said the words, and it's difficult to say, but I'll just quote him on what he said in a report that we edited on the news. He said, we don't want to live in Auschwitz, which is an understandable thing, I think.
- [21:04]
A
Yeah. I mean, I'm just thinking back as a younger man, I lived on a kibbutz where each week there would be those. The asifa, the big collective discussion and those votes and they, you know, there's an intensity to that kind of democratic participation because it's not mediated, it's not through representatives or delegates or it's the people themselves making that decision. I can only imagine the sort of sobriety of that conversation, a huge thing. I sort of get the decision and I think I probably. I can imagine having voted on the side, that in the end we're in the majority, if I'd been involved in that conversation, simply because it has to be about looking forward. Gibberi was one of the kibbutzim I visited just a few weeks after October 7th. In fact, it was the first of the attacked kibbutzim that I did visit. And it was all over. I mean, it was everywhere. It was not just one sort of neighbourhood of the kibbutz. It was. You'd go from. It's funny to talk in terms of streets, but people who know kibbutz will know it's not quite streets, but one area neighborhood after another just, you know, ashen, incinerated, charred walls ridden with bullet holes, torched just everywhere. And I think if the community is to have a future, I can see really the case that it would be impossible to sort of live all the time with that. I can imagine the nuance on this would be. Is one really enough? Should it be a little row of three or four houses, just in case there's damage or something? But, but, but the principle I really do get, and I think it's a declaration, a statement by them that they plan to live and they plan to have a future. I wonder if other kibbutzim. This is obviously a decision they're all going to have to make one way or another. Is this now going to be the lead or will some decide that? Look, actually they can. There will be an interest. People all over the world will still want to come and look. And actually there's a value, value in keeping a whole neighborhood in that way. I can imagine some making that decision. Obviously we respect the decision and, and the Quote you've used not does convey the sort of argument, I suppose.
- [23:16]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that we can agree that it is up to them to decide and it's their decision how to remember and to leave a monument, to leave a few of these houses, houses as a monument or only one or you know, and again, how to rebuild the next kibbutz, major kibbutz that needs to decide this is Nil Oz, that a third of their residents were either murdered or kidnapped on October 7th. I have to tell you, Jonathan, as someone who saw obviously like you went through, walked through the kibbutzim, but also the command center in the Nahal Oz base was kept as it is. It is going to turn into a monument. It's a harrowing thing to see. It's incredibly difficult. But you understand what happened there on October 7th and what those soldiers went through and those young women. And so I think that there is an importance to do it. Of course, I said first and foremost it is the decision of the kibbutzim. There's also some sort of government involvement in this sort of thinking. But because it is the same government that was in place when October 7th happened, this of course is very charged with how to remember. So it's a question. And we will be seeing more and more of these examples in the next couple of months.
- [24:36]
A
Yeah, I can imagine those communities thinking to the government, look, you weren't here on the day. You weren't here even for the aftermath. I mean, it was civil society that had to look after those people and step in. You know, you have have no say over what we do next. That, you know, it's something perhaps we don't think about enough. That disengagement puts it very politely. The disconnection between the communities hit struck on October 7 and their own government, the antagonism really they feel, you know, I, I think it took, we all. Tell me the best part of 2 years, 18 months or something before Prime Minister Netanyahu even visited those kibbutzim. They didn't want him there. He knew he would get a very rough road bride when he went there. There's a real chasm between them.
- [25:25]
B
He went to Nero's only recently. He went to Berry before, but yes, it took a very, very long time before he came there. There's a political chasm between them and as you said, an antagonism. Of course it's connected to the fact that Netanyahu doesn't want a commission of inquiry. You know, all of that. And still the Prime Minister, you know, all that is very, very charged. So in that vein, I mean, we have to maybe connect to the fact that this week during Netanyahu's trial, yes, that is still continuing, even though he submitted a. An official request for pardon essentially to stop his trial. But that is continuing. And a group of bereaved families just came into the courtroom. They weren't trying to stir up anything. They weren't trying to, you know, protest. They just came and they said they wanted to look him in the eye and ask him for, even in their presence, to ask for a commission of inquiry. One of the guards in the courtroom kind of tried to take them out or say that they were waving signs. They weren't. But that created a bit of a commotion. Just another indication of just how this wound is still an incredibly open one in Israeli society.
- [26:30]
A
Yeah. And I think I've mentioned before, it shocks me each time that when they're not treated with a sort of deference, even kind of reverence. I mean, I remember this with the hostage families, you know, they would be shouted at when they went to Kinesic Committee hearings and sort of abused. It's shocking to me still, I thought.
- [26:53]
B
Right. Not by most.
- [26:54]
A
Absolutely sure, of course. No, no, I'm. And then they, in that particular case, that Knesset committee hearing, it was people in the Religious Zionism Party of Betsell El Smotrich, who and Ben gvir. They didn't have. Have any compunction, any hesitation about really sort of dishing it out and making all kinds of accusations. In my naivety, I thought even people, whatever, wherever they were on the spectrum, and we are talking about a minority, would feel an obligation to be hesitant, restrained and polite when it came to those families, as if they were off limits. In a way, it's like the Gold Star families in the United States. And, you know, Donald Trump just rode right through that and started attacking those families. He broke a kind of taboo. That's the sort of taboo I thought was there. It's obviously not there. And so their treatment at the trial that you referred to is all part of that. And just when we're on sort of domestic scene in Israel, the coalition has been rather busy.
- [27:51]
B
Yes. I mean, what we're seeing now is sort of two things. One, the fact that the ultra orthodox have been thus far, for a few months, boycotting the coalition, not voting with Netanyahu because they wanted a draft bill to exempt most of the community from military service. So it was very hard for the coalition to get anything done. And now, as this Draft bill is progressing through the Knesset and we talked about that at length last week. The ultra orthodox are back, back voting with the government. So what you have is really a blitz of legislation, a lot of it focusing on what this government wants to focus on, which is to curtail the, the power of the judiciary in any of that areas and of course to curtail the power of the media. So you will see a lot of, of bills, a lot of them have been, you know, have passed in first reading, some of them second and third. This all has to do with the timing of the elections and when we think that will happen. I, I would say the common sense is to look at March. Netanyahu has to pass a budget. It will be a very, very difficult budget with a lot of cut. That's obviously because of the defense budget that needs more and more resources. So I think that will be the sort of first big stone in the road. And if we are, if the Knesset fails to pass that, then the coalition dissolves and we're looking at elections in June. So it all has to, you know, every piece of legislation, I get a lot of questions or is this going to pass? It really has to do with how long it will take the coalition and, and how, and how soon elections are.
- [29:29]
A
Yeah, that's becoming the prism through which we look at everything now. And you know, exactly. It's all about the calendar as we go into 2026.
- [29:41]
B
Yes. And you know, it more and more is clear, and this is true to every leader everywhere in the world, that a leader somehow lives a filtered reality. Right. He doesn't really meet the people without bodyguards. He can't really sit around and listen to what the common person is thinking and talking about, because that's just the nature of, of what you do. But more and more, when you are a prime minister accused of never take, and in fact not even accused, I think it is safe to claim, never taking responsibility for October 7th in any way, then that sort of filtered reality has to grow in many ways or that sort of layer between you and the rest of the nation has to become a thicker one. Because the more more the Netanyahu supporters would blame everyone else but him for what happened on October 7, the more you need to distance the leader from everything that is being said. And you see this Netanyahu is not doing interviews in mainstream media, in Hebrew. He's not doing almost press opportunities. It's all recorded messages. And more and more that is the sort of feeling that there's a filtered reality. And it goes into that story of the courtroom like it wasn't even possible for, for bereaved families to just sit there without doing anything, just being there. It adds to that.
- [30:51]
A
I think it does raise an interesting question about how what campaigning will look like come the election. If somebody has to be that insulated, that's going to be a very different kind of campaign.
- [31:01]
B
A lot of social media, that is the answer. If we are on the topic of social media, we actually want to talk about politics in another country, which is the United States. We have been talking, I think at least in Israel, looking a lot looking, focusing on what is happening on the American left and the sort of anti Zionist voices. But I think, and we've been teasing this a little bit, you and I on the podcast, but I think what is happening on the American right, Republican maga, Trump supporters, what is happening vis a vis Israel and Jews in general is fascinating. It's frightening. But I think we have an excellent guest to talk precisely about that point.
- [31:46]
A
J. Oliver Conroy is a writer on political culture for Guardian US. He's a colleague of mine and the author of a recent essay that got a lot of attention. Its headline white Nationalist Nick Fuentes Is Exposing a Civil War among Republicans. It rather brilliantly dissected a phenomenon that we have been talking about a fair bit on the podcast and so we are very glad to have him with us. Oliver, welcome to Unholy.
- [32:15]
C
Thanks very much for having me.
- [32:18]
A
We're very glad. Let's just start at the beginning with the name that was mentioned there in that headline. Just tell us who Nick Fuentes is and how did he come because he's very young. How did he come to be such a prominent player on the American right?
- [32:33]
C
That's a great question. So Nick Fuentes is a 27 year old white nationalist and Christian nationalist who livestreams a nightly show from Chicago. He started, he first came to prominence in 2016 as a college student when he sort of became kind of a controversial figure at his college campus in Boston because he would walk around wearing a MAGA hat. And then he later dropped out of college and became basically a full time white nationalist. And the question of how he became so influential is more complicated. But basically he has a pretty big audience of fans known as groipers who tune in every night to his or five, five night week to his show. These are people who are anti Semitic, racist, homophobic who have a very far right vision of what the United States is or should be. And he has hundreds of thousands of fans determining exactly how Many fans he has is difficult, but he certainly has huge reach online and he's used that reach to kind of try to pull the more mainstream MAGA right further to the right. And in particular is using Israel and anti Semitism as kind of wedges to try to sort of drive wedges between parts of the right and kind of force more mainstream conservatives to sort of choose a position, basically.
- [34:16]
B
Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, you mentioned, of course, this is rhetoric. I mean this is racism and there's anti women hate and there's violence a lot in this violent rhetoric. But, but his definitely the, the anti Semitism is, is sort of front and center, which is very interesting because when you think of, you know, what things you would think just originally would not be even sayable in American, you know, language. He says, he even says Hitler is cool. Like it's just, it talks about organized jury. I mean, things that no one would imagine saying out loud even I think five or 10 years ago. And this man is becoming much less fringe and much more mainstream.
- [35:00]
C
Yeah, it's pretty shocking. And I mean, it's obviously he is, he is a far right figure. He is barred from attending cpac, the Conservative Political Action Conference. So certainly there has been a kind of cordon sanitaire that's been, that has kind of barred him out of polite mainstream maga, conservatism, or what you want, whatever you want to call it. But certainly that barrier seems to be falling down. And Fuentes has appeared in recent months on a number of more mains, you know, relatively mainstream platforms. He was on Glenn Greenwald's show. He was interviewed recently by Tucker Carlson on his show. And it certainly seems as if he and his ideas are suddenly much more mainstream in a way that would have been unthinkable even, you know, five years ago.
- [35:54]
A
I want to get to the Tucker Carlson interview because that's obviously a crucial moment, but just to locate exactly the world view. I mean, I first came across him because I saw this video which I have to say I found absolutely chilling of him, him smirking throughout a whole riff of Holocaust denial in which he ran this argument, which used to be extremely fringe, that there was simply not the kind of physical capacity in the Nazi death camps to have killed this number of Jews. The ovens weren't big enough and so on. And he did this performance with this smirk in which he never referred to Jews. He referred to, let's say you're baking cookies and 6 million cookies and so on. It was absolutely sickening and chilling. All at once. And particularly this, this smirking expression. Holocaust denial is one of the things we haven't mentioned. I'm just keen to know whether he is, as it were, one of those old school anti Semites who thinks that the Jews are at the center of it all. In other words, yes, they're against black people and Muslims and, you know, gay people, but they see all those people as, in a way, the tools used by the all powerful Jew at the center. Is he that kind of full strength, old style, Nazi style anti Semite, or is his hatred of Jews just in among all the other diverse groups that he hates?
- [37:16]
C
Good question. I'm trying to do a sort of a typology of, of hatred in my head. Yeah, I think he is. Well, he's both. But I think Jews are kind of the central unifying theme and certainly the group that he talks about more than any other. So I would say closer to the first.
- [37:37]
A
Yeah, that's, that's telling.
- [37:40]
B
And, and again it, it drags into, and you mentioned this, he kind of uses, it kind of feels like he's using Israel as this, I don't know, lightning rod or some way to sort of drag Republicans to show who's with him and who's against him. But it's really interesting because you would say, obviously, sadly, as an Israeli, I have to say Israel is far today from being a bipartisan issue like it used to be, I don't know, a decade ago, two decades ago. But you would think of like the Republican Party having a sort of, you know, sound evangelical base, very pro Israel, even the sort of neocons, what is left of them, are pro Israel. And he and the sort of, again, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon's are, are voicing this very, very anti Israel voice in the Republican Party. How influential is that?
- [38:25]
C
Yes, that's a good question. And that's kind of the central question of my recent piece about Fuentes more so than about Fuentes himself. I mean, I think that the thing that's complicated about all of this is that somebody like Fuentes has been very good at intertwining his antisemitism with more mainstream, legitimate political criticisms of Israel or of the US Relationship with Israel in a way that's made them difficult to disentangle. And he's doing it also at a time when Israel has kind of become this hot and button, this hot button issue. Well, in general, but on the American right, and I think that people like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, others have really realized that the zeitgeist has changed a lot and that the American people are no longer as uniformly behind Israel as they once were not that long ago. And that within the right, specifically Israel is a kind of wedge issue. It's kind of like the last sacred cow. And that the people that you were talking about, the neocons, the Christian Zionists like Mike Huckabee, they are very much out of the mainstream. They may be in the majority for the time being, but in some ways they're kind of dinosaurs. People like Ted Cruz are regarded as dinosaurs by younger conservatives, by younger people on the right. And I think people like Tucker Carlson understand that very well. Certainly Nick Fuentes understands that and are keen to indicate that they're with the younger generation.
- [40:07]
A
This generational thing completely fascinates me. I'm not sure I'd clocked this until I read you on this, partly because on the podcast we have talked so much about the what seems to me a mirror or mirror image of this, which is on, in the, in the Democratic Party on the left, where the younger generation are moving away from the Zionism of their elders, you know, so it's absolutely typified by, if you like Zoran Mamdani, young anti Israel, Joe Biden, old pro Israel. And that fault line in the Democratic. What you're saying is that something similar is going on, I think, much less noticed on the right. You had this line in your piece. You said at the time, younger evangelical Protestants increasingly regard Christian Zionism as a bizarre and embarrassingly dated tick of their boomer parents. So just explain the generational element for that and whether it is a bit like what's gone on the Democrats. How much is this about Israel's own conduct? For example, you know, sympathy for Palestinians who were on the receiving end of the Israeli response to October 7th over these last two years. Is it about that or is it about some other thing that's not really about Israel's own behavior?
- [41:19]
C
The honest answer is it's kind of all of the above. You know, is it about Israel's conduct and the war? Is it about antisemitism? Is it about an older America first paleo conservative isolationist wing of the, of the GOP reasserting itself? Is it about horseshoe theory and, you know, the, the, the far left and the far right kind of converging in certain respects? The honest answer is it's, it's kind of all of those things. And, you know, with some people, it may be more of one than the other, but certainly all brought together, it has become a Fairly sizable, if maybe not yet a majority force on the, on the right. Certainly Donald Trump still certainly seems to be fairly pro Israel, even if he's kind of inconsistent about it. But yeah, as, as you said, there's this generational divide that's very real. And younger conservatives, some of whom would even call themselves conservative because conservative is kind of a dirty word to them that they associate with, with older, you know, older conservatives of the more kind of Reaganites, William F. Buckley, you know, mold. They, their attitude is we're America first and we thought Donald Trump was America first. And when you said you were America first, we took you at your word. And they've taken that logic to its maximum final degree, basically.
- [42:45]
B
By the way, if they don't use the word, the term conservative, what term would they use to call themselves?
- [42:50]
C
Well, they would identify maybe as populists. I don't know what they would, maybe they would call themselves just right wing themselves. But certainly conservative is one of those terms that means different things to different people. And for some younger people on the right, they associate it with, you know, somebody, you know, somebody from the George W. Bush administration.
- [43:12]
B
So let's move on to discuss the Tucker Carlson interview and why this was so much more than just an interview.
- [43:19]
C
Like what happened so in late October, shortly before Halloween, which I'm sure was just coincidental timing, but added a certain ironic perhaps resonance. Yes, Tucker Carlson did a, I think about two hour friendly, you could call it an interview is it was more like a Joe Rogan style long form conversation with Nick Fuentes on his, on Tucker Carlson's extremely popular online talk show. And that was a sensation and immediately controversial for, for obvious reasons. And it really hit the conservative world or the right like, like a meteor because although Fuentes has been kind of becoming more prominent or were more mainstream very quickly, he still wasn't quite at the level where you would think that somebody like Tucker Carlson would be interviewing him, even though, you know, certainly Carlson has said kind of adopted some pretty radical positions over the past couple of years since leaving Fox News. He's interviewed some pretty kind of utre guests that were people that would have been very utre at Fox. He's interviewed Daryl Cooper, this sort of podcaster and amateur historian that some critics have accused of being basically, basically peddling soft Holocaust denial or revisionism. I should be careful with my language here for legal reasons. But you know, even then it was still pretty shocking that, that he interviewed Fuentes. Obviously Carlson would probably defend himself and has defended himself by saying it was kind of a situation of he had become too big to ignore. But either way it was immediately controversial. It was controversial on its face, but also brought to the fore all of these issues that we've been talking about. All of these generational tensions, ideological tensions, the populace versus the conservatives, the mainstream right versus the far right, pro Israel conservatives versus the people in Washington known as the restrainers, the kind of Israel skeptics. All of this stuff as well as this central question about antisemitism which has been something that has haunted the American right for a long time. So all of it just came to the surface like this weird Halloween surprise.
- [45:48]
A
And then as you chart it did have this big fallout where institutions are scrambling. Do they denounce Carlson for putting him on or do they not? Carlson himself is obviously hugely influential central figure. His show maybe, I mean other than Fox News, the sort of focal point of, you know, American right media. Did you, did you read that as being that a huge figure like Tucker Carlson now agrees with Nick Fuentes that he's with him in his, in all the, you know, myriad prejudices that we've heard that he articulates? Or was it more that there was Tucker Carlson thinking I better, you know, get with the program, get down with the kids because the new generation are into this guy and I need to make sure I'm not left behind. I mean, I just don't know how to, to read that whether actually what we're seeing is a big chunk of the American right now coming in behind this 27 year old white supremacist, racist and anti Semite.
- [46:48]
C
I certainly think that Tucker Carlson agrees with Fuentes criticisms of Israel. In fact, Carlson has devoted quite a lot of his show over the past year or so to attacking the US relationship with Israel, probably more than almost any other subject I can think of. Just today or yesterday he released another, another episode that was basically about this and was basically arguing that Qatar has been or should or would be a better ally to the US than, than Israel is. So this is certainly a, something that Carlson has been kind of going on about for a while. So in that respect he's very much ideologically aligned with Fuentes. Obviously he would say he's not anti Semitic, but when it comes to the, the actual policy questions at play, there's probably not much distance between them and, and Carlson has repeatedly attacked, he has this long standing kind of hatred of what he calls neoconservatives and, and you know, Israel hawks. He was enraged by the decision of the US to, to join the attacks On Iran earlier this year, he did an interview with Senator Ted Cruz, who is a very well known Christian Zionist and, and you know, pro Israel conservative, where he basically just completely ripped Cruz to shreds. So in that respect, I think he completely agrees with Fuentes. As to the second part of your question, Yes. I think also the people who are the best weather veins of MAGA populism or of the right within the right, like Tucker Carlson, like Steve Bannon, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, all of them have been becoming much more skeptical, if not outright hostile to Israel. And I think that's telling.
- [48:45]
B
Perhaps this is anecdotal, but I interviewed Mike Waltz just yesterday. He's currently the US Ambassador to the UN he was Trump's national Security advisor. And what was interesting, he's a staunch Israel supporter. What was very interesting was when asked about Tucker Carlson in his views, he was very careful not to attack Tucker Carlson personally. He said Israel is important, Israel is important for this relationship. We need to tell the younger generation. But he didn't attack Tucker Carlson, which is of course indicative of just how much power Carlson has in the party.
- [49:16]
C
Yes, and I think many conservatives are very scared of Carlson. In a sense they should be. He has a huge audience. He's probably the single most influential.
- [49:30]
A
Political.
- [49:30]
C
Commentator or what influence or whatever term you would want to use on the right. He's certainly the single most influential one outside of the traditional, you know, traditional broadcast platforms like Fox maybe in some ways because of the age we live in, more influential because podcasts and alternative media have become more important than those things. And he's somebody who is very smart, is very canny, has very shrewd political instincts and also seems to survive controversies that would sink many other people. He's a bit like Donald Trump in that respect. You know, Teflon Don. And certainly so far he seems to have survived this controversy. Somebody once told me they'd never bet against Tucker Carlson, which I, I think is, is accurate. But yeah, I think absolutely many conservatives are frightened of him. He, he also has a close relationship with J.D. vance, the Vice President and he helped get J.D. vance his, his slot as running mate.
- [50:28]
A
That gets us to a question which I think is important, which is. Oh, you. We've been talking about the kind of media sphere, the, the blogosphere is what we once would have called it, you know, the online environment in terms of formal politics, this split within the Republican Party, who is on each side at the, at the sort of governmental level. I think you've mentioned a few of those names, Marjorie Taylor Greene and so on. But should we now be thinking that when we talk about Fuentes and Carlson, do we need to include J.D. vance in that list? Is he part of this movement that is, you know, to put it gently, skeptical of the relationship with Israel? And not, we think, because they have some, some deep concern, humanitarian concern for the population of Gaza, but because they have some other thoughts there in the Fuentes case about Jews and their place in society, if not the world. Where do the big politicians fit? I mean, Vance is obviously the one that people are looking at.
- [51:29]
C
It's hard to say. Obviously, many mainstream Republican politicians are still very reliably pro Israel, and that can be a bit of a tension. Certainly many of the prominent members of Congress, like Mike, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is quite pro Israel. JD Vance is an interesting case. I obviously wouldn't want to insinuate without any evidence that Semitic, because I've seen no evidence of that. But I don't know what his views on Israel are. But certainly the people who are skeptical of Israel view him as one of their own or hope that he's one of their own. And I think a lot of this very much is kind of a proxy war over JD Vance because right now he, as far as anybody can tell, is the only logical or the primary successor to Donald Trump, who's a lame duck president. And everybody within the conservative movement is hoping that their vision of conservatism or their vision of the right is the one that's going to become, it's going to be carried forward. And for many people of the new right, that is to say, the more kind of populist, nationalist, isolationists, anti free trade, anti free market school of, of, of the right. They're hoping that J.D. vance will be somebody who's sort of like the more ideologically coherent, more intellectual, more politically disciplined version of Trumpism than Trump was. Whether that's true, I don't know, but that's what they hope. And they also hope that he's somebody who's going to be much more skeptical of the US Relationship with Israel, the US Relationship with Ukraine, and just in general very much renegotiate America's relationship with the world.
- [53:18]
B
We didn't mention an important piece of this, of course, is the sort of Heritage foundation being this very important think tank and not denouncing Tucker Carlson for interviewing Nick Fuentes. In fact, even I think Kevin Roberts used the word globalists when he talked about this, this refusing to kind of supporting Tucker Carlson. And you listen to Nick Fuentes And I think again, anyone, you don't have to be Jewish to have shivers down your spine when you listen to him. You know, he admires Joseph Stalin, all of that rhetoric, but you kind of think, okay, so he is attacking the right from the far right. Is there someone even worse than him somewhere lurking in the shadows?
- [53:57]
C
You raise though, you raise an interesting point though, which is that the Heritage foundation and Kevin Roberts, and for people who don't know, the Heritage foundation is this very influential conservative think tank in Washington D.C. probably the single most important or powerful in terms of money and influence, conservative organization in Washington D.C. and Kevin Roberts is the head of that organization. And basically what happened, part of this whole controversy is that after the Carlson, after Carlson's interview with Fuentes, there was this pressure on the Heritage foundation to distance itself from Carlson because the Heritage foundation had some personal and commercial ties with Carlson. And Kevin Roberts, the head of the foundation, put up this video statement that actually to many people's surprise, not only did not distance himself, but actually very much defended Carlson. Less so, but maybe by continuation by, by implication Fuentes and basically said anti Semitism is very clearly wrong. He, he, you know, did not, you can't say that he did not contemn condemn anti Semitism but also said, you know, conservatives are allowed to question America's relationship with any other country in a very pointed way that until recently would have been rare on the right. And that sparked a huge ideological civil war inside the Heritage foundation, which, which later came to, came to kind of encompass more and more of the right. But it's been fascinating to see and Roberts is an interesting case because he's somebody who is very much of that kind of MAGA culture warrior, anxious not to be perceived as insufficiently hardcore.
- [55:57]
A
Has.
- [55:58]
C
Become more critical of Israel in a way that many of these figures have and clearly also believes that the Zeitgeist is moving in that direction, you know, of being, of being more skeptical or hostile of Israel.
- [56:12]
A
You know, we're hovering over this conversation has been Donald Trump himself. And people, as you say, are looking to the future and thinking about J.D. vance, but just on the Israel piece of it, actually. And also I think a lot of American Jews on the right as well have sort of placed a bet on Donald Trump thinking that he's a solid friend of Israel, he's a solid friend of the Jewish community. You know, Jared Kushner, his son in law is Jewish and his grandchildren are Jewish and Ivanka converted and so on. And they sort of comfort themselves with that thought. Is your assessment that that, as it were, lasts, or do you think if the wind is blowing towards the Fuentes Carlson kind of worldview, does Donald Trump follow that himself? I was thinking of your point about Qatar is a better friend than Israel, says Carlson. I could imagine Donald Trump nodding along to that. I mean, does he, does he move or is he somebody that Netanyahu placed his bet can depend on?
- [57:09]
C
That's the eternal question. I mean, the problem with depending on Trump is that he's flaky and temperamental. He's transactional and, you know, he can be your best friend one week and your worst enemy the next and then go back to being your best friend. And that's true, as many, many countries, politicians and different groups of people have learned that the question of his stance towards Israel, I don't know. Certainly there was a recent controversy, as I'm sure you're aware, involving Mike Huckabee having a kind of off the books meeting at the US Embassy in Israel with Jonathan Pollard, a man who's convicted of spying for Israel that is considered by many Americans to be a literal traitor. And Huckabee had this sort of, kind of made this kind of bizarre, unforced error decision to have this meeting with him that enraged many people in the MAGA movement. They were furious, I think, somewhat understandably so, about that. And Trump declined, he has so far declined to sort of, you know, discipline Huckabee, as far as I'm aware, for that. So in some respects he's still, Trump does still seem to be a fairly conventional pro Israel president. But, you know, he's somebody who whose whims change and also at the end of the day, he's a lame duck president who's not going to be in office for that, that much longer and who is not going to be the torchbearer of the Republican Party or the conservative movement for that much longer. So I don't know, I have to.
- [58:54]
B
Say, as the Israeli in the conversation, this is all reassuring in so many ways, but it was a fascinating conversation. Thank you so, so much for talking to us, Oliver. Thanks a lot.
- [59:04]
C
Thanks for having me.
- [59:10]
A
Well, I found that really, you know, illuminating. I'm not going to say it was cheering because it wasn't, but I think really, really illuminating. And I definitely was aware myself that I've been noticing things on the American left and hadn't this generational shift. I, I know I sort of went on about it, but that to me is fascinating. That, and it goes to the thing I was saying I just think Netanyahu and the others made an assumption that the Christian rights support for Israel was given was permanent sort of granite that would never move. And what it shows you is things are dynamic, things do move. And so it may not have been such a wise bet to sort of write off the Democrats and the left. We don't need them. The universities, they're all liberal because we've got the Christians and the Christian right. Maybe that is an unsound bet.
- [59:58]
B
Yeah, I mean, even before we get to the sort of the now bets, I'm just talking about that kind of alliance that has been created between the kind of old school anti Semites, right, the far right anti Semites and the sort of isolationists on Israel and them together being this group that has so much power in the Republican Party. I mean, and we can't look away from that. It's a really concerning trend. When you add to that what you pointed out, I think really interestingly, that whole generational thing, right. Israel is not cool for the younger generation, generation one fears all that together in the mix is, is really worrying. There was this poll done by the Manhattan Institute, by the way, inside the Republican Party. And it kind of adds into what we were saying. That's 37% of Republicans say the Holocaust was exaggerated or didn't happen. I mean that these are stats from today. And so if you add that into everything that we have been talking about, it's just really, it's, it's frightening to be honest.
- [60:57]
A
I was speaking with someone who watches anti Semitism as a problem very closely in terms of protecting the Jewish community. And they were very clear that look, day to day, the threat to synagogues and schools is. This was a person speaking in the European picture. Is jihadist violence, Islamist, extremist Islamist groups? Yes, yes. The long term thing that is really worrying them is this because if the American Republican Party realigns to be anti Israel, but not anti Israel because they care so much about Palestinians, but anti Israel because they think the Jews are the root problem of all their misfortunes, to use a deliberately historically loaded form of words, that is really serious business because it's first of all, 5 million plus Jews live in the United States, but also it is a sort of trendsetter, a standard setter for the whole of the Western world. And this could be normalizing something that for 80 years or so has been regarded as beyond the pale. I mean, Fuentes himself is. There's nothing ambiguous about this. This is a chillingly racist anti Semite and He embraces that term. He says Adolf Hitler is really effing cool. This is a frightening figure. And so I thought, Oliver really, you know, set out the terrain for us. And I think it'll be one subject we will be coming back to, I'm sure. I think you're kicking us off with a chutzpah nomination.
- [62:35]
B
We are discussing the Columbia report, Anti Semitism Task Force. I think it has released its fourth, fourth and final report. This is very important to show what has been going on in the school and what the Jewish students have been suffering and going through during this period. The whole report is about Jewish students being single out and scapegoated. What got our attention, I think, is a quote in which that says that classes on the Middle east were saturated with condemnations of Israel, including falsehoods. One instructor said, and I quote, theodor Herzl was an anti Semite and Eastern European Jews were not actually Jewish. So obviously that instructor has never met Eastern European Jews. But what I want. Can we focus on. Herzl was an anti Semite. Herzl father of Zionism from the balcony in Basel, Herzl from Herzliya, and who gave his name to Herzl street and to Herzl and Sons Falafel. He was an anti Semite. We can argue about the quality of his drama if you want, but I think that is beyond what we can.
- [63:46]
A
It's a bit of a reach, isn't it? I mean, is there some argument made to unpack, to sort of try.
- [63:51]
B
I tried to search for that, but I couldn't. I mean, is there an argument made? Who cares? It's not. It's just. It's so ridiculous that it.
- [64:01]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, I know. It's. Well, a. Yeah. A striking nomination. And Columbia, again, I mean, you know, they really. They have a habit of appear pro cropping up in our award section, usually in one half rather than the other.
- [64:17]
B
Yes. But I would, I think perhaps recommend to listen back to our conversation with Dr. Karen Yara Chimillo, who's the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs. And our. We had her on Unholy Live, and I think it's very interesting to hear how she talks about how Columbia tried to combat this anti Semitism problem. She doesn't deny that it existed. And she kind of goes through how the school tried to correct itself.
- [64:42]
A
Yes. Although she would deny that Theodore Herzl counts as an anti sequel.
- [64:46]
B
I think she would.
- [64:49]
A
Yeah, I think so. To our Mensch Award, then. I think we should give this to a publisher this week. Full disclosure. It is Pushkin Press who actually published King Winter's Birthday, the little children's story that I hadn't put my name to last year. The important point is they are really in the business of recovering and that was true of King Winter's Birthday too. Old stories that have been somehow lost. They are about. They have just released a new anthology of the work of Bruno Schulz Schultz, who the great Isaac Bashem Singer called a Polish Franz Kafka. David Grossman, Israel's foremost living novelist, wrote of him that life explodes on every page he wrote. And yet most people won't, I think know that name. And that is because Bruno Schulz his writing life and his life was cut short. He wrote published two books of short stories in the 1930s. In 1942, Bruno Schultz was shot dead by an officer of the ss and so it took a long time for people to sort of rediscover his work. It happened some 40 years after his death. Philip Roth was a big champion. The New Yorker was published some of his work. Cynthia Ozick Various people have really tried to say this is one of the great writers. And so Pushkin Press are bringing out again the collection is called Nocturnal Apparitions. Bruno Schultz. But to Pushkin Press, a mensch award for bringing this great writer to perhaps a new audience some 80 plus years after his murder.
- [66:41]
B
Agreed. We are in total agreement mode on the rewards this week. What's wrong with the universe? It must be a storm heading our way.
- [66:51]
A
Byron in storm form is.
- [66:53]
B
I will update you on how this is going, Jonathan. I will during the day. We should also say that for subscribers we have a bonus episode of questions and Answers that took us to quite interesting, interesting alleyways. I would really recommend that. And we will meet next time.
- [67:09]
A
See you then.