podcast friday

[sabotabby]

 A little late. Look, I was doing other stuff. This week's recommendation is Bad Hasbara's latest episode, "Free Mahmoud Khalil, with Bilal Sharmoug." 

I can't stop thinking about Mahmoud Khalil and neither can Matt or Daniel, or Bilal. This episode is all over the place. You can probably skip like, the first 20 minutes of banter. It's just important that everyone know as much as possible and fight as hard as they can because Mahmoud is the guy. He's specifically the guy. He is the guy in the first line of the poem. He is the very thin line between ostensible lip service to democracy in America and outright fascism. If they deport him, they are coming for any American who doesn't deepthroat the boot, and when they're done disappearing those, they'll come for the people who didn't deepthroat the boot hard enough.

I am full of rage. At Trump, and Elon, and all of those fascists of course, but also at Columbia University, which failed to protect its students and despite its attempts to fully fellate the autocrats, is still going to lose all of its funding, and deserves to. For the liberal Zionists. I know right-wing Zionists are pieces of shit but none of this happens without the majority of the American Jewish community failing to hold organizations like the ADL to account, for whining about campus protests, for weaponizing social justice vocabulary that never should have escaped containment on Tumblr. To the credit of a handful (mentioned in this episode), some are taking the "I hate this guy but he shouldn't get deported" line, but like. It's not the majority. Do they not know that the precedent for sending the goddamn Gestapo after a green card holder who isn't accused of a crime is a law that they used to deport Jews? Do they know that dozens of Jews have just been arrested at Trump Tower in the name of "stopping anti-semitism"? Yeah they know, it's just despite their professed lack of safety they know deep down they're at the bottom of the poem.

I have been thinking of campus free speech fights and how just a few short years ago, the right was whining about how they didn't have free speech on campus. What did the left do? Protested Nazis and got our skulls cracked for it by the cops. We didn't go whining to Big Brother to deport people we didn't like, because we're not a bunch of little bitches. Meanwhile, when the right doesn't like free speech on campus, they go complaining to the manager and forget all about their professed commitment to free speech.

Anyway, the first step is learning everything you can, so this episode is helpful, even if you have to skip ahead because of the rambling.

Comments

[smhwpf]

I share your view that Mahmoud Khalil is, like, the Rubicon case. I dunno what we can do from out of the country... I mean I've signed the petition, which is one of the bigger ones you see around the place, but pfft. My Senators and Reps are already on the right side of things. Still, worth giving them a further push/encouragement I guess.

I think it's important to be clear that the right's cries of free speech were never hypocrisy, they were a plain and simple lie. What they always meant (as I'm sure you also saw from the beginning) was that they should be the ones to decide what speech is permitted and what is not.

The descent into outright fascism in the US is happening faster than I thought possible.

Karen Attiah was posting on Blue Sky today that if you want to know how to actually fight, look at the liberal and left activists in the South. The GOP have been doing there what they're now doing to the whole country for a long time, and the people fighting back are badass and down for the fight, while the blue state Dems have been smugly chuckling about how stupid people in the red states are.

[sabotabby]

Oh, we all knew that, but maybe we didn't communicate it clearly enough? I don't know.

I keep wondering what I can do from out of the US. Probably boycott the US, but that's very hard.

[altamira16]

I don't know how much recruiting of foreign students Columbia does, but I really do hope this hits them in the tuition dollars.

[sabotabby]

I knew when they cracked down on foreign students here, it fucked the universities, to the point where they're on the verge of bankruptcy. I can't imagine it's much different in the US.

[ioplokon]

They've got bigger problems than that. Trump is still targeting them constantly. And personally, I think that no matter what they give him, it won't be enough.

[sabotabby]

Definitely not. They need to say absolutely fucking not and ban ICE from campus. They're screwed either way, might as well be screwed in a way that they get to keep their self-respect.

Meanwhile Harvard Law students just passed a divestment referendum, which sets up a very interesting conflict.

[ioplokon]

We are appalled to think that in the days of absolute monarchy a lettre de cachet could send free men to penal servitude with no other form of trial. But does it appal us enough that similar things continue to happen in the democratic society we live in?

[sabotabby]

Trufax. It turns out everyone can find an exception when they want one.

[sovay]

Columbia University, which failed to protect its students

The iceberg is starting to open up beneath the waterline.

[greylock]

Literally, as well as metaphorically, thanks to the new EPA rules.

I was going to mention this case as I read about it this morning, but that article does it better than I could.

Even though they're very different cases. It's the wedge.

And that's before we even get into the Mexican cancer toddler.

(And, damn, if I can't stop thinking Columbia is a target because Trump knows where it is).

[sabotabby]

Mexican cancer toddler?

[katuah]

I'm trying to find more about it, but the small bit i heard is that a US-citizen child whose parents are from Mexico was coming to the US for CANCER TREATMENT and has been deported with her parents.

[sabotabby]

Fucking hell.

[sovay]

I'm trying to find more about it, but the small bit i heard is that a US-citizen child whose parents are from Mexico was coming to the US for CANCER TREATMENT and has been deported with her parents.

She's ten years old, but the deported while receiving continuing care for her brain cancer is the screaming bit.

[sabotabby]

JFC. Those ghouls.

[greylock]

I was wrong. She was not a toddler.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/15/us/parents-deported-mexico-daughter-cancer-treatment/index.html

[sabotabby]

How do these people look at themselves in the morning?

[sabotabby]

Of course, because these kids are acceptable targets to the centre as well as the right.

[sovay]

Of course, because these kids are acceptable targets to the centre as well as the right.

I hope your government takes care of this one, since no one here other than it sounds like her roommate has.

[sabotabby]

It timed out for me, but I'm seeing a lot of outrage on social media about her.

[sovay]

It timed out for me, but I'm seeing a lot of outrage on social media about her.

Good. I haven't yet seen petitions etc. for her, but I'll link if—and I hope—I do. (Sorry about the archived link blowing out.)

[greylock]

Children are preferred targets.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/trump-immigration-deportation-children-trafficking.html

(Not that 'Straya can brag. Still....)

[sabotabby]

I mean, because these people are all pedos. I really think they are.

[greylock]

I don't know that they are.

They get up in the morning and don't see people as people.
Which is how every crime against humanity happens.
I can see that.

I don't think they're pedos. It's just justification.

[sabotabby]

At the root of right-wing ideology is the desire for a compliant child-wife.

[greylock]

That, in the US at least, I cannot argue with.
IDK about Canada, but I have not seen any evidence elsewhere.

[katuah]

I think a good analogy might be queer movements, if we want to look beyond civil rights struggles.

[sabotabby]

For sure.

[katuah]

It's definitely where I cut my teeth as an activist. Not so much ACT UP because I was in the rural South and they were mainly in NYC and such, but Queer Nation and campus groups and protests and generally being in-your-face OUT in conservative areas - and how to create community bonds and organize when nobody had money or privilege - and underground networks to let you know where you could stay safely when traveling, or provide clues that weren't immediately obvious. You know. That stuff.

[sabotabby]

This is important stuff. I primarily know about urban...everything.

[katuah]

which is of course SUPER important, but it takes all sorts :-D including us redneck homos. (although I'd say my knowledge is kind of dusty these days, I am a bluegrass song - hooked up with a city girl, moved to the city, got a job. lol )

[sabotabby]

Legit love that for you though.

[lokifan]

I have been thinking of campus free speech fights and how just a few short years ago, the right was whining about how they didn't have free speech on campus.

RIGHT???

[sabotabby]

We all know they didn't mean it (because, of course, they wanted the cops/universities to crack down on the protesters exercising their right to free speech!) but I'll never stop pointing out the hypocrisy anyway.