[Mehran] Welcome, Katie, the floor is yours.
[Katie] Thank you.
That was great.
[Applause]
Hi, everyone.
Thank you so much for coming tonight.
The organisers were really adamant that tonight
not just be depressing, but be inspiring
and give people hope.
Oh, I'm glad you're already laughing, okay.
I know it's funny right,
to think of something on this topic being inspiring.
In that vein, I want to start off tonight with actually a game.
This game is called: Who said it,
Donald Trump or Noam Chomsky?
[Audience laughs]
Let's see how everyone does, ready?
Who said the following, ready?
In some cases, I'm not going to quote verbatim
because if I quote verbatim,
it's too obvious from the style of talking.
It will either be a quote or a summary of what they said, ok?
So who said:
The U.S. won't sanction Saudi Arabia over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi
because that would jeopardise billions
in arms sales to Saudi Arabia?
Raise your hand if you think it's Trump.
Okay, Chomsky?
All right, it was Trump.
[Audience laughs]
Not only was it Trump, but he was saying it about himself.
He was explaining why he wouldn't sanction Khashoggi.
Okay, let's see what's next.
We left troops behind in Syria for the oil.
Okay, who says Trump?
Okay, Chomsky?
Trump, ok, good, good one, all right.
Who said in response to claims of Russian interference
in US presidential elections, who said in response to that:
'The US has interfered in the elections of many other nations.'
Chomsky - Trump
Chomsky
[Audience laughs]
Ok, who said:
'The Iraq war sunk America's prestige?'
Chomsky?
Trump?
Chomsky.
[Audience laughs]
Who said: 'There are a lot of killers,
what do you think, our country's so innocent?'
Trump - Chomsky?
That was Trump.
Who responded to the claim that:
'The only one who wants the war to continue with Hamas,
who responded to that claim saying:
'Actually, Israel is the one who wants the war to continue.'
Trump, ok.
Chomsky?
Trump.
The reason that we can even play this game
of who said it: Donald Trump or Chomsky
is because they do have something in common.
They state inconvenient truths.
There are a few differences obviously.
Starting with the fact that when he's not stating
inconvenient truths,
Donald Trump is lying pathologically and rather creatively and flagrantly.
Also they have a totally different value system, right?
Let's go back to one of the earlier quotes I did
about how Israel wants the war to go on.
That was actually taken during the one and only debate of 2024
between Trump and Biden.
Biden said that the only one who wants the war to continue is Hamas
and Trump said: Actually Israel is the one.
But he finished that sentence.
The full sentence was: 'Actually Israel is the one
and you should let them finish the job,'
So there he has it,
he's critical of Israel in a weird way
or maybe he's praising Israel according to his moral values.
Obviously, Chomsky would have shared that same observation about Israel
wanting the war to go on but would use that
to then argue why Israel should not
be funded by the United States, right?
He also, I should bring up one other thing
that Trump said that really resonated during the debate,
which was at the end, Joe Biden said something
and Trump said: 'I really don't know what he said.
I don't think he knows either.'
[Audience laughs]
At that moment, we were all Trumps.
Ok, back to the Trump-Chomsky game,
I don't bring it up to taint Chomsky as Trumpian
it's not to praise Trump as Chomskyian
it's not to make some lazy horseshoe theory based observation about
the Left and Right meet each other.
And it's not to argue that Trump isn't an imperialist
or that Chomsky is.
And also, I'm not an excelerationist,
I'm not arguing that it's a good thing that Trump was elected,
I don't believe that it won't get better until it gets worse.
I'm saying that a silver lining of Trump's presidency
is that he is laying bare the brutality of American imperialism,
a brutality the Democrats tried to conceal.
So we should take advantage of that.
Now, as disgusting as it is
[Applause]
as disgusting as it is
for Trump to announce plans to open a Riviera on the Gaza Strip,
isn't it nice to hear someone admit that our foreign policy
when I say our, I'm talking as an American,
our foreign policy isn't driven by a commitment
to fairness, justice, and the rules-based order?
Isn't it helpful to know that in fact,
there is no rules based order?
Isn't it helpful to not pretend that the US funds
and enables Israel because it's a democracy?
Another example is Ukraine.
People are scandalised that Trump spoke to Zelensky
like a petulant, ungrateful, uncooperative
and self sabotaging child, which he did.
But isn't that in some ways preferable to what Biden did?
Biden may have said nice things about Zelensky
but what did he actually do?
He dangled NATO membership in front of him,
while knowing full well, that was never a possibility.
He claimed to care about Ukrainian sovereignty and self determination
while sending Boris Johnson to tell Zelensky not to negotiate with Putin
one month into the war.
Had they done that, the war would be over by now
thousands of people would be alive
and Ukraine would have more land than they will ever have now.
It's also worth noting that 52% of Ukrainians want a negotiated settlement.
When people say listen to Ukrainians,
you should find out what Ukrainians are talking about.
Trump speaks crudely and cruelly of natural minerals in Ukraine
but if the US is going to exploit Ukraine,
isn't it better that Americans know what the war is really about?
And isn't it better for Ukrainians to know what the US is really prioritising?
Another thing I want to thank Trump for is bringing Elon Musk into the forefront.
Because like Trump, he's exposing things, right?
First of all, this guy literally comes out with
a chainsaw to demonstrate how he wants to cut the welfare state.
Which again, that would be like a parody,
that's something the Left would say about him, to critisise him.
But he actually does it.
[Audience laughs]
That's how out of touch he is.
Also it was great when he gave the Nazi salute
not because I'm a fan of the Nazi salute,
but because it was so great at exposing the absolute bankrupt,
hypocrisy and rank hypocrisy of the ADL,
the Anti Defamation League
which claims to combat anti-Semitism but really creates anti-Semitism
by suggesting that...
[Applause]
-they're not clapping for anti-Semitism they're clapping for calling it out-
by suggesting that being Jewish and being Zionist are the same thing.
I mean, maybe it's like a bad sign
when you're talking points are shared by the KKK.
Think about the people who use the terms
'Zionist' and 'Jewish' interchangeably, right?
It's like David Duke types, real neo-Nazis
and of course, the ADL and AIPAC and Israel.
Politics makes strange bedfellows.
When Elon Musk gave that salute,
what was so great about it was that the ADL had to defend him.
The ADL said that it wasn't actually that problematic,
people were on edge, people need to calm down,
people were being too sensitive, but it was totally kosher.
[Laughter]
My word, not theirs at the end, but basically
I paraphrased.
So that was useful because it laid bare what despicable
people the ADL are.
Now, I also liked it because it brought out Steve Bannon
and he did another salute, but the reason I like Steve Bannon
is because he makes me feel really special
because he said that the number one enemy
are Jews who are critical of Israel,
American Jews who are critical of Israel.
So, I was kind of blushing.
[Laughter]
[Applause]
How much time, when did I start?
I forgot to check the starting time sorry, alright.
The other good thing about this is that
people are seeing thru the Dems.
They are waking up to the fact
that the Democrats did not fight against Trump.
They don't really want to fight against Trump
the way he needs to be fought against.
They are feckless,
they care more about defeating someone like Bernie Sanders
than defeating someone like Donald Trump.
[Applause]
People are waking up to that.
The numbers are that Democratic voters , have very low
opinions right now of Democrats in Congress.
Now, to be fair, I have to mention these people.
There are some people who are truly awful,
who continue to blame 3rd party voters for giving us Trump,
taunt Palestinian Americans for staying home or
voting third party.
They refer to them as 'Dearborn voters'.
They tell us that people are
self-indulgent practicers of purity politics
who needed to do whatever it took to stop Trump.
Well, if people need to do whatever was needed to defeat Trump.
shouldn't that have included Kamala Harris?
Because for a year and a half a significant and vocal
portion of the Democratic Party electorate
and their Progressive base organised, begged and demonstrated
for the party to change it's policy
of blanket diplomatic support for Israel
and curtail extraordinary lengths to arm an active genocide in Gaza.
The polls showed this would have helped her numbers.
Was it not self-indulgent and Trump-enabling of her to
ignore the base and instead run around with Liz Cheney
and brag about getting an endorsement from
war criminal Dick Cheney?
And by the way, a YouGov IMEU poll showed that 29%
of voters nationally who voted for Biden in 2020,
and cast their ballot for someone besides Kamala Harris in 2024
did that because ending Israel's violence in Gaza
was the top issue effecting their vote choice.
So again, Kamala Harris should have been listening to her base.
Remember the person running is supposed to earn votes, right?
It's not the other way around.
Another thing that's positive is that people are
seeing through the media.
So more than 75,000 subscribers have cancelled
their Washington Post subscription since Jeff Bezos
announced he would only promote free market
and libertarian ideals.
Another example, thank you for saying the
quiet part out loud, Jeff.
Again, that's like a critique that you wouldn't make
of him, Yanis, but he's saying it about himself.
Also, MSNBC viewership is really low.
And I do want to say how disgusting Western media has been on Gaza.
I actually learned this kind of firsthand.
My experience was not that bad and it certainly
pales in comparison to Melanie's which you'll
hear about shortly.
But I made a video at an outlet called 'The Hill'.
I wrote a monologue saying that Israel is an apartheid state
and for that, I got fired and even though there was
really nothing you can say because the video pointed
out how many people including the Israeli Human Rights
Organization, Be'tselem, and including former
Israeli Prime Ministers were calling it an apartheid state.
But, people are seeing through the media
because the media is just an arm of the state,
not only the United States, but of Israel.
One of the most I think, disgusting examples of this
was the way that rape was reported on.
The Western media was totally complicit
in this narrative of a mass rape,
coordinated mass rape,
systemic mass rape committed by Hamas, they claimed.
All of the witnesses walked it back,
all of the witnesses were debunked.
No one was saying, this wasn't an issue of
believe women because no one was saying
it happened to them.
Now, the same media who covered that story and
never retracted it decided to ignore the fact that
it was documented that Palestinians were raped.
I mean, this was covered by Israeli media and
somehow Western media never covered it.
This isn't like, you don't even have to go to Haaretz.
This was Centrist and Right-wing media
that covered this.
This was sexual assault captured on video.
And this is something that you actually had a
member of the Knesset.
debating whether or not to arrest people
who had raped Palestinian prisoners.
That's what the debate was about.
There were protests when they started to arrest soldiers,
but the protests weren't about the rapes,
the protests were about arresting them.
And you actually had a member of the Knesset being asked
rhetorically: So is it legitimate to insert sticks
into people's rectums?
And a member of the Knesset said, yes, it's legitimate.
Why wasn't that story all over Western media?
Why don't the people who claimed to care
about rape and sexual violence talking about that?
So you have to remember this,
that the media is totally untrustworthy
when it comes to this issue, especially
and they don't care about Palestinian lives.
[Applause]
But, luckily it's becoming harder and harder to paint
the pro-Palestine movement as anti-Semitic.
It's becoming harder and harder
to conflate anti-Semetism with anti-Zionism.
And again, I'd like to remind people that
to suggest that conflation is anti-Semitic,
it's the old dual loyalty trope
which is that all Jews are monoliths
and we're all loyal to Israel.
I think it's undermined by the fact that you have people
like so many Jews protesting the war in Gaza
but it's also undermined when you see
the state which claims to care about Jewish safety,
do things like arrest Jewish students who are protesting.
That's something that unites the whole Western world, right?
You see that happening in the US,
You see that happening
in Germany, with Yanis but also, where you had Udi Raz
who was wearing a Yamaka, thrown down the stairs by German police.
You see that when you have a literal holocaust survivor
like Stephen Kapos who's being questioned by the police
for protesting for Palestinian rights.
You see that in London when you have someone like Haim Bresheeth
who is the son of holocaust survivors an Israeli,
arrested for saying that Israel is not going to be able to defeat Hamas.
All of these things are being laid bare.
I want to just end off by quoting someone
because the real inspiration comes from so many different
struggles that are so interconnected.
But, I know a lot of people are like:
what can give us hope, or how do we keep going
and I feel like hope actually is a discipline
and a choice and we owe it to the world to keep it.
I understand loosing hope but, we have to keep reinventing it.
People here probably know who Refaat Alareer is.
He was a poet and professor in Gaza.
[Applause]
He wrote a beautiful poem called: 'If I Must Die'.
He was murdered by Israel.
He was targeted.
It wasn't just a random war crime.
It was a targeted one.
His sister's apartment building was struck
but it was just the sister's apartment, they knew he was there.
They didn't take out the whole building,
they just took that one out because they wanted to kill him.
They wanted to kill him because this poet spoke out
against Israel's genocide.
He and I were corresponding a couple of months before he was killed.
I asked him: What can we do, what can we do in the West?
And he said: Thank you for offering, more pressure on the media, more coverage,
more Palestinian voices, more protests, hopefully Israel is curbed asap.
And so, that is the message that I wanted to leave you with.
More pressure on the media, more coverage, more Palestinian voices,
more protests and hopefully Israel is curbed asap.
No matter what happens, we have to keep doing those things.
Thank you.
[Applause]