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Episode 348

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Published on:

4th Oct 2025

Ep 348 - Gaza: Digital Colonialism & Resistance with Omar Zahzah

The Palestinian liberation struggle is a fundamental class and anti-colonial issue. First-time guest to the podcast, Professor Omar Zahzah, talks with Steve about the active collaboration of Silicon Valley tech giants with the US and Israeli governments to censor and suppress anti-Zionist narratives. 

"What these companies are doing is digitally amplifying a physical process of settler colonial dispossession." 

Omar goes beyond labeling digital censorship as simple political bias. He argues that Silicon Valley's actions are a direct extension of imperialist goals in Palestine: the erasure of a people, their narrative, and their history. Big Tech is not a referee – not even a biased one. It is an active combatant. 

Omar provides a sharp critique of how the language of safety and anti-racism is co-opted and weaponized. Online platforms use terms like "harassment" and "hate speech" to silence criticism. 

In their discussion, Omar and Steve apply Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony to the digital sphere. They analyze how Big Tech platforms shape our "common sense," not just through outright censorship, but through algorithmic curation, shadow-banning, and overwhelming activists with trolls and bots, waging a "digital war of attrition" that drains energy and shifts perceptions. They also suggest the potential TikTok ban is not just a US-China trade issue but a symptom of a crisis of hegemony. 

Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet, organizer of Lebanese Palestinian descent, and Assistant Professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University. Omar has covered digital repression in relation to Palestine as a freelance journalist since May 2021, with work appearing in such outlets as Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, CounterPunch, and more. Omar holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA. 

His recently published book is Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle 

@dromarzahzah on X    

 

Transcript
Steve Grumbine:

All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today's

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guest is an author. He is also a professor, and more

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importantly, he is an activist. And he's got a great analytical

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framework for understanding the suppression and the social media censorship, quite

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frankly, that has gone on regarding the Palestinian struggle for liberation

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and quite honestly, the genocide of the people of Gaza that

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we've been able to watch live streamed mostly for the last

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couple years. And he's written a book called Terms of Servitude:

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Zionism, Silicon Valley and Digital/Settler-Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. My

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guest, who you may have heard of before, is Omar Zahzah.

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He's assistant professor of Arab, Muslim, Ethnicities, and Diasporas (AMED) Studies

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at San Francisco State University. And the book traces the timeline

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from the Sheikh Jarrah uprisings of 2021 to the beginning of

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October 2023 to the most current developments to explain social media's

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role in advancing and suppressing Palestinian narratives. So without further ado,

Steve Grumbine:

let me bring on my guest, Omar. Welcome to the show.

Omar Zahzah:

Thank you so much for having me.

Steve Grumbine:

Absolutely. We have tried really hard over the years to cover this in the

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best way we could. We are a macroeconomics podcast that does the interdisciplinary natures

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of struggle. We are also a podcast that focuses on class struggle. And this

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is very much a class issue. This is very much an issue that people

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with a socialist worldview would find incredibly important to their way of life, their

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ideological framework for how they view the world. A dialectical perspective, for sure, here

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will allow people to understand how we got here, not just "Whatever happened on

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October 6th?" They will really, truly understand all the things that led up to

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the point where we are. And your book is really fantastic. We've covered a

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lot of AI issues and we've covered a lot of social media suppression issues,

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algorithm issues, censorship, et cetera. But this is at a whole different level because

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this is covering up for a genocide. This is literally silencing people who are

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in a desperate attempt trying to feed themselves, much less get healthcare and just

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make it to the next day. We're not even talking about, "Hey, I'd like

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a career. Hey, I'd like to be able to buy a ping pong table

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or I'd like to enjoy video game." We're talking about people trying to survive

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one day to the next being literally silenced by huge, huge media companies with

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government intervention and a whole host of actors that are working collectively together, from

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Silicon Valley to the White House. And obviously the least able, if you will,

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the least financed, the least capable of resistance, are forced to not only resist

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the oppression that they feel on a daily basis from the bombs and from

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the other militarization of the region, but also from these tech oligarchs who have

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silenced the cries for justice. Tell us about what brought this book into being

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and give us a little bit of background for why we should be paying

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attention to this.

Omar Zahzah:

Thank you so much for that question. As you noted in your introduction of

Omar Zahzah:

the text, this really began for me in 2021. Some of your viewers may

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recall that it was at this time that you started to see protests by

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Palestinians who were opposing their looming expulsion from the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of

Omar Zahzah:

Sheikh Jarrah. And a big part of their demonstrations, their protests, their activism, was

Omar Zahzah:

the use of social media. Now keep in mind that this followed on the

Omar Zahzah:

heels of the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, which I think had also kind of

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primed us globally for broader structural conversations about racism. Not just being a question

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of interpersonal attitudes, but really about a system, an overall structure of oppression, exploitation

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and ultimately state-sanctioned violence and even death. And so all of that's to say

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that by the time 2021 comes around in a kind of larger global sense,

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people, the general public here, I'm saying, I think were already primed for related

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conversations about other forms of systemic and structural oppression. And so 2021, the timing

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of it I think lines up very nicely in this regard because people are

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ready to hear differing perspectives on what the nature of the Palestinian struggle really

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is. And shifting it from a lot of the liberal bromides or honestly the

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Zionist propaganda that is perpetrated by the legacy corporate media towards really shifting our

Omar Zahzah:

perspective to understanding that first and foremost this is about settler colonization. And this

Omar Zahzah:

is about a process that has been in place since the Nakba of 1948.

Omar Zahzah:

And even prior to that, when you have preceding regime of British imperialism that

Omar Zahzah:

first begins to welcome and work to institute what will become the ascension of

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the Zionist project in Palestine during its own mandate. So it's been an unrelenting

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process of settler colonization that is abetted by imperialism and shifting from the imperial

Omar Zahzah:

mandate of Great Britain at the time, now the United States, which is entered

Omar Zahzah:

as the current global superpower. So a lot of background. But what happens is

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essentially that these organizers, these activists, take to social media in 2021, protesting their

Omar Zahzah:

situation, but also protesting the way that the Palestinian narrative has been consistently misrepresented

Omar Zahzah:

within legacy corporate media, within the sphere of politics at large. And they're effective.

Omar Zahzah:

They do start to affect narrative shifts. And they're so effective at it through

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using platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter at the time, now X, that legacy corporate

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media begins to take note, begins to platform them increasingly more. And they also

Omar Zahzah:

prove themselves to be savvy at navigating those terrains, redirecting the questions, right, rejecting

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the propaganda, or what the critic Steven Salaita has referred to as the prerequisite

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to speaking that Arab individuals are often confronted with. Like you need to speak

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on a particular script, you need to condemn a particular project before we will

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allow you to say what you really came to say, to challenge the injustice

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that you're facing. They turn all of that on its head and they expose

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it for what it is in real time. And so all of this continues

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to have vast gains for shifting perceptions of what the Palestinian struggle is really

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about. And of course, as a result of this success, these same Big Tech

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companies that had initially made these counter-hegemonic opportunities possible try to roll back those

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gains by engaging in increasingly collective forms of censorship. So you see blanket censorship

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of posts about Sheikh Jarrah, of posts about the Israeli occupation forces incursion into

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the Al-Aqsa Mosque, of the bombing of Gaza that happens in 2022. You start

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to see an increasing social media blackout, the suspension of accounts, the deleting of

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posts, the banning of prominent Palestinian accounts. All of this happening at such a

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rapid scale that it's very clear that there is a coordinated attempt to silence

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these dissenting voices. Again, what is unique about this moment in time, we're still

Omar Zahzah:

in 2021, 2022, is that this happens at such a scale that legacy corporate

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media also has to take note of this silencing. So they begin to report

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on it. So we start to get our first peek behind the curtain, our

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glimpse into the fact that these Big Tech companies that had really branded themselves

Omar Zahzah:

on providing the instruments of democracy, are engaging in a mass censorship of people

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righteously resisting their colonial dispossession at the hands of a settler colonial state. And

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this kind of contrast between, on the one hand, the promise, and if you

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want to get a little cynical about it, the false branding, but also arguably,

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the potential of these platforms to work in a certain way, to be re-appropriated

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in a particular form by activists, and the actual practices of these companies when

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they see their platforms utilized too successfully for purposes to which they were never

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intended to be put. Because, of course, the point of these products is to

Omar Zahzah:

keep us passively consuming, just mindlessly scrolling. And they often try to discourage political

Omar Zahzah:

engagement in general, or at least political engagement that is serious, that is sustained,

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instead of something that will work towards sensationalism and keep us kind of anxiously

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glued in that regard. So that contrast became really intriguing to me, and I

Omar Zahzah:

started to think there was something to this dynamic that not only needed to

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be commented upon, because we had a lot of writing already coming out about

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this seeming contradiction between what social media could be and how it's actually being

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implemented and what that means for Palestine, but I was thinking that it would

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be important to start to think about a larger project that put the clearly

Omar Zahzah:

targeted censorship that Palestinians are facing on these platforms into conversation with other interventions

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about Big Tech and how Big Tech fortifies systems and structures of racism and

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dispossession. So I'm thinking here of studies like Ruha Benjamin's Race After Technology, studies

Omar Zahzah:

that really talked about how despite its propaganda, Big Tech is often the main

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culprit in fortifying the various systems that it claims its products will allow for

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people to challenge. And I felt that what was happening to Palestinians needed to

Omar Zahzah:

be engaged in a sustained way in this broader context and put into conversations

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with these broader interventions into the oppressive machinations of Big Tech as it is,

Omar Zahzah:

precisely because what these companies are doing is digitally amplifying a physical process of

Omar Zahzah:

settler colonial dispossession.

Steve Grumbine:

That is very powerful. I was trying to figure out how to frame the

Steve Grumbine:

digital colonization, the settler colonialism. And it just dawned on me. You said a

Steve Grumbine:

couple words in there that I think tie together really, really well and are

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super important. One of them, you said hegemony, and that harkens back to Antonio

Steve Grumbine:

Gramsci. And we have been focused on very heavily on the impact of cultural

Steve Grumbine:

hegemony lately, not only in the economic space where these frames and these kinds

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of statements and concepts and institutions all reinforce the hegemonic view of neoliberalism. In

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fact, the ruling class uses these things as a means of disciplining us and

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so forth. And we could see this kind of rise of a fascism in

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terms of the brutality and crackdown on people with differing opinions outside of that

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hegemonic state. I'm curious, could you speak a little bit to hegemony here and

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how this kind of dynamic is playing out in terms of the common sense.

Steve Grumbine:

Of course, we all are kind of led to believe that Israel is the

Steve Grumbine:

victim here, which is rather comical if you've had any historical framework of the

Steve Grumbine:

comings and goings of the region. What are your thoughts on how cultural hegemony

Steve Grumbine:

and in particular some Gramscian views of how this is playing out?

Omar Zahzah:

Yeah, it's a really rich and at the same time very important dynamic to understand

Omar Zahzah:

classically the concept of hegemony, referring to how systems of belief that are most beneficial

Omar Zahzah:

to the political sphere are replicated and sort of maintained within the cultural realm, the

Omar Zahzah:

one that is seemingly disconnected from politics. In the Palestinian context, I think we put

Omar Zahzah:

rightfully as critics a lot of emphasis on legacy corporate media because it's the main

Omar Zahzah:

instrument of manufacturing consent for various imperial projects that the US either directly undertakes or

Omar Zahzah:

supports as part of its broader program of geo-imperial domination. And the Palestinian context is

Omar Zahzah:

one of those. And it's a very unique case in point in the sense that

Omar Zahzah:

what types of media maneuvering the Palestinian context has resulted in oftentimes an outright erasure

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of Palestinian perspectives and voices within the corporate legacy media channels. And when they are

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engaged in this very piecemeal, sensationalized way that ultimately continues to reaffirm the larger Zionist

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narrative. Things like thinking of the Israeli state as this poor besieged bastion of democracy

Omar Zahzah:

that is simply trying to do the best that it can while being confronted by

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all of these aggressive and hateful and subhuman anti-Semitic peoples who have no culture aside

Omar Zahzah:

from hate. And you can keep tropifying this on and on and on because I

Omar Zahzah:

think it's been so culturally distributed that we understand how it works, even if we

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are also critical of it. So that had been one of the main instruments of

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maintaining this broader cultural normalization of thinking about Israel and the Palestinians or even just

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the Arabs, because oftentimes Palestine is erased. We don't call it Palestine. Right? But thinking

Omar Zahzah:

it in a particular way. And then you start to have the sort of introduction

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of these other platforms that are supposedly able to kind of allow for us to

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redirect that so ostensibly provide an opening to enable people to somewhat subvert some of

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the terms of the hegemonic worldview as we have come to know it, as it

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has come to be normalized. But then of course, what you start to see is

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precisely these very platforms are actually just as invested in perpetuating the ultimate implications of

Omar Zahzah:

this initial form of hegemony. Now they can't do it as overtly. They can't do

Omar Zahzah:

it as directly. First of all, because there's so many people actually using these platforms.

Omar Zahzah:

Secondly, because there have been so many gains in terms of the dissemination of different

Omar Zahzah:

materials that show people conditions that do contravene some of the more basic tenets of

Omar Zahzah:

what this initial propagandistic narrative had been. So they can't necessarily always engage with the

Omar Zahzah:

same maneuvers, but they can do things like they can censor. They can shadow ban.

Omar Zahzah:

They can blacklist. And that erasure can also still have implications. One of the other

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ways that I think about hegemony in the book, and I write about this a

Omar Zahzah:

little bit in the introduction, is, in addition to that particular political definition, which also,

Omar Zahzah:

of course, entails the need to mount a counter-hegemonic cultural offensive to spread these counter

Omar Zahzah:

narratives that are going to advance vis-a-vis a word position. One of the other ways

Omar Zahzah:

I get into it, though, is just the fact that there's so much capture that

Omar Zahzah:

these platforms have on our social imaginations, on our understanding of how we think about

Omar Zahzah:

the world around us. This is going to sound maybe a little bit almost supernatural

Omar Zahzah:

or so, but the different newsfeeds that we have kind of become their own kind

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of default for how we conceptualize the organizing of discourse or how we think about

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how can we put information together in a readily accessible way? Because they provide a

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template for us to think about newer forms of communication and the dissemination of information.

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So they also have a hegemonic influence in terms of how they relate to the

Omar Zahzah:

way that we see and understand the organization of the world. And so when they

Omar Zahzah:

practice these forms of censorship, they can also have, even if it's a less-noticed influence,

Omar Zahzah:

they can still have an influence in our sense of, okay, what do we prioritize?

Omar Zahzah:

What do we think more or less about? What are we seeing more in our

Omar Zahzah:

algorithmically curated feeds? What are we not seeing as much of? What happened to that

Omar Zahzah:

Palestinian journalist I followed a few months ago? I haven't heard anything from them. I

Omar Zahzah:

haven't seen them. Maybe you'll remember to seek out their page, but maybe you'll forget.

Omar Zahzah:

And that's also going to subtly start to code your own sense of political urgency,

Omar Zahzah:

your sense of the need to take immediate action. So they have, I would say,

Omar Zahzah:

seemingly more subtle means of still advancing a particular hegemonic understanding in line with what

Omar Zahzah:

the status quo requires for people within the West to think. Because ultimately we need

Omar Zahzah:

to come back to supporting the Israeli colonial project. But I would say that precisely

Omar Zahzah:

because of their subtlety, I felt it was important to mount kind of a sustained

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engagement with them and exposing them for what they are, which is still an instrument

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of advancing a hegemonic understanding that through these practices that disabuse the Palestinians engaged in

Omar Zahzah:

righteous dissent from being able to advance their own counter-hegemonic narratives that, as we've seen

Omar Zahzah:

over the past few years, have been increasingly successful in changing perceptions of Palestine, even

Omar Zahzah:

as the situation itself on the ground continues to remain dire and unfold in newly

Omar Zahzah:

horrific ways as the genocide continues.

Steve Grumbine:

You said something really important, and I want to touch on this as a follow up. Gramsci did

Steve Grumbine:

talk about a war of position and a war of maneuver. And I'm curious, what do you mean

Steve Grumbine:

by that when you're referencing it here? Because I think it's fascinating. I still would really love to

Steve Grumbine:

know a deeper understanding of that whole framework of those two. I know one is kind of appealing

Steve Grumbine:

to the elites, trying to get them to change the way they behave. And I know the other

Steve Grumbine:

one is just straight-up revolution. Can you help me better understand what you mean by that?

Omar Zahzah:

Yeah, definitely. In this context, I'm using it loosely. And the reason that I'm

Omar Zahzah:

using it loosely is I'm referring to, I would argue it's operating on multiple

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senses of the term, because on the one hand, there is a broader Palestinian

Omar Zahzah:

undertaking to shift the narrative and for supporters of the Palestinian liberation struggle to

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really continue to try to attack the centers of power and shift and challenge

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and repurpose a lot of the ways that those centers of power have framed

Omar Zahzah:

our understanding of these political conditions up to this point in time. So I

Omar Zahzah:

think that probably converges with the first instance that you're referring to, which is

Omar Zahzah:

perhaps the swaying of elites, the shifting of their perspective, because certainly there is

Omar Zahzah:

this idea that the more people that are activated, that see things for what

Omar Zahzah:

they really are, the more potential you have for making change. I would also

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say that in my writing, and just in general in my journalistic career, I've

Omar Zahzah:

been very influenced by the Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud, who himself is also very

Omar Zahzah:

much a Gramscian and has an important book, I believe, called These Chains Will

Omar Zahzah:

Be Broken that's about Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. And he talks about these

Omar Zahzah:

prisoners as Palestine's organic intellectuals. So that's referring to another Gramscian concept of the

Omar Zahzah:

organic intellectual, somebody who emerges from particular situations to become the kind of spontaneous,

Omar Zahzah:

embodied intellectual that represents a particular form, form of dispossession within a particular social

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context. So in this case, Baroud talking about Palestinian Prisoners as the organic intellectuals

Omar Zahzah:

of Palestinian struggle. That kind of gets me to the second point, which is

Omar Zahzah:

that Palestinians as a colonized and occupied people are engaged in multiple forms of

Omar Zahzah:

resistance, all of them legitimate, because again, this is an anti-colonial struggle.

Steve Grumbine:

Sure.

Omar Zahzah:

So there are some who are engaged in revolutionary military, anti-colonial struggle, and then

Omar Zahzah:

there's the grassroots and different activists all over the world, Palestinian journalists. So it's

Omar Zahzah:

working on all multiple aspects of kind of cultural agitation. So I do think

Omar Zahzah:

that obviously there is a direct revolutionary component to it as well, but I

Omar Zahzah:

think we need to understand it in the multiple senses precisely because we have

Omar Zahzah:

a full and diverse array of Palestinian cultural resistance that is being practiced and

Omar Zahzah:

all of it to advance the ultimate goal of Palestinian liberation.

Steve Grumbine:

Thank you for that. It was excellent. Very well stated. You talk about breeding trolls

Steve Grumbine:

for the startup colony, and we have a person on our team who was raised

Steve Grumbine:

up in the Hasbara. You know, it really was put through the kibbutz and through

Steve Grumbine:

all the other things that trained him up to be kind of in that space.

Steve Grumbine:

And then he broke free and now he's an advocate. His name's Jonathan Kadman. He's

Steve Grumbine:

one of the people on our team here at Real Progressives and works on this

Steve Grumbine:

podcast, Macro N Cheese with us as well. It just sort of was a shocker

Steve Grumbine:

to me, even though I knew some of this stuff. It was just really shocking

Steve Grumbine:

the level of depth that they go with this kind of approach to, I don't

Steve Grumbine:

know, brainwashing, creating a narrative, if you will, that suits Israel, suits the Zionist project.

Steve Grumbine:

And it always brings to mind the concept of counter revolution. People always wonder why

Steve Grumbine:

revolutions end up violent. Why? "Oh, you know, when this guy took over, it was

Steve Grumbine:

like totalitarian," or it was this or it was that. But they never go back

Steve Grumbine:

to. To understand what a counter-revolutionary force does and how it rips apart the gains

Steve Grumbine:

of the revolution, so to speak. And in this case, you watch the Palestinians and

Steve Grumbine:

the activists that are fighting to bring awareness to this using TikTok and other things.

Steve Grumbine:

And lo and behold, the hegemon, the counter revolution, kicks in. The monarchist, it's a

Steve Grumbine:

bad term, but you get the gist. They decide, okay, let's use our power within

Steve Grumbine:

the kind of blending of state and industry with Silicon Valley and these AI firms

Steve Grumbine:

and these other Silicon Valley kind of cyber warfare units, and they ratchet up and

Steve Grumbine:

now all of a sudden they counter the gains through TikTok and through everything else.

Steve Grumbine:

But they use, of course, hegemonic words to make it seem like "We're doing this

Steve Grumbine:

to protect the children from really bad actors on TikTok and we're saving us from

Steve Grumbine:

China, who's abusing their access and so forth." But they're not really telling the truth

Steve Grumbine:

because at the end of the day what they're doing is silencing resistance, silencing struggle.

Steve Grumbine:

Trying to put a wet blanket on that. Breeding trolls for the startup colony. I

Steve Grumbine:

love that. Cyber warfare in the age of Hasbara 2.0. Can you talk about that?

Omar Zahzah:

Thank you so much for that question. So, starting with the title, it was a

Omar Zahzah:

little bit of a punny sort of tongue in cheek, but it was a refutation

Omar Zahzah:

of one of the big lines of Zionist tech propaganda, which is to think of

Omar Zahzah:

Israel as the startup nation. And I talk a little bit about that book, that

Omar Zahzah:

so-called study that really is basically just a paean to Israeli tech and startup culture

Omar Zahzah:

and basically talking about how its militarism is part of what gives it, you know,

Omar Zahzah:

this "innovative capability," like culturally, of course, because it is a work of propaganda. It's

Omar Zahzah:

not going to acknowledge that the conditions that it's describing and the things that it's

Omar Zahzah:

referring to are all processes of colonization. So I was saying in that chapter, hey,

Omar Zahzah:

you know, we're not dealing with a startup nation. Israel's a settler-colonial state. This is

Omar Zahzah:

the startup colony. And part of the strategy that this colony uses is to breed

Omar Zahzah:

trolls again because we have this adage of, "Don't feed the trolls. Don't engage with

Omar Zahzah:

trolling." But trolling is really a top-tier strategy of Zionist cyber warfare. And I talk

Omar Zahzah:

about this constant barrage of propaganda as a form of cyber warfare. Hasbara 2.0, you

Omar Zahzah:

know, there I pull from the digital anthropologist Miriyam Aouragh, who wrote this essay called

Omar Zahzah:

Hasbara 2.0. And basically she was reflecting on what happens when you see, let's say,

Omar Zahzah:

the mostly complete capture by Zionism of legacy corporate media narrative. Right? And I say

Omar Zahzah:

mostly because she reworks Herman and Chomsky's concept of manufacturing consent a little bit to

Omar Zahzah:

say that the very fact that the legacy corporate media is so driven by numbers

Omar Zahzah:

is a capitalist venture in and of itself, sometimes predisposes it to platform dissenting views

Omar Zahzah:

for the sake of increasing its ratings. So they'll never literally eliminate every dissenting voice

Omar Zahzah:

possible, but they can by and large have this capture by Zionist propaganda because this

Omar Zahzah:

supports the imperial project. So she talked about Hasbara 2.0 as the continuing attempt to

Omar Zahzah:

by Israeli state actors, Zionist forces to maintain the narrative control the generally largely unchallenging

Omar Zahzah:

narrative control they saw in legacy corporate media to bring it into the emerging Internet

Omar Zahzah:

technological context. So when you start to have the rise of blogging, where it's no

Omar Zahzah:

longer, for example, just the news channel, but maybe those reporters start to be able

Omar Zahzah:

to have blogs. They can start to report things more in real time. So she

Omar Zahzah:

talked about the informational strategies, the propaganda strategies that Zionists use and how they are

Omar Zahzah:

specific to the increasingly rising moment of the Internet as we were seeing it at

Omar Zahzah:

that point in time. So essentially what I was describing in that chapter is how

Omar Zahzah:

we can think about Internet trolling. The direct and intentional encouraging of Zionists, of Israelis,

Omar Zahzah:

often of young Israelis, to take to prominent sites to engage in pro-Israel messaging through

Omar Zahzah:

institutions like Hasbara Fellowships. These are often paid undertakings. You have the Israeli military itself,

Omar Zahzah:

the occupation forces, maintaining various websites engaging in propaganda through their various digital platforms. And

Omar Zahzah:

a lot of this also entails putting emphasis on making sure that you have a

Omar Zahzah:

large amount of people who are going to sites that are platforming a dissenting view

Omar Zahzah:

about the Palestinian struggle and attacking them, essentially delegitimizing them, engaging exactly in the type

Omar Zahzah:

of what I would say gaslighting that you were describing earlier. You know, "Israel is

Omar Zahzah:

a democracy. Israel was attacked. Israel is a beacon of hope, et cetera, et cetera,

Omar Zahzah:

et cetera. This is pro-terrorism, et cetera." And to kind of engage in this, perhaps

Omar Zahzah:

you could think of it as a kind of digital war of attrition. Right? [Hmm

Omar Zahzah:

mmm] Because there's two things that can happen. Maybe you get somebody to disengage a

Omar Zahzah:

little bit or to reconsider. I think that's less likely, especially when you're attacking a

Omar Zahzah:

very outspoken prominent voice who's informed on what's happening. But you could potentially scare off

Omar Zahzah:

other potential supporters or you could wear those people down. And so one of the

Omar Zahzah:

things that we've seen, especially since the start of the latest genocide, and some of

Omar Zahzah:

the people I've interviewed in the book have dealt with this at length. They describe

Omar Zahzah:

how there's been a real refinement of the ability to create AI bots. And they

Omar Zahzah:

took these Palestinian content creators, described how their page would be swarmed with these bots

Omar Zahzah:

when they would post anything about the genocide. And they said, it's very clear they

Omar Zahzah:

were bots. I mean, this was too coordinated. It was happening too quickly, too fast.

Omar Zahzah:

And they're all just almost copy-paste the same type of comment. But they're happening on

Omar Zahzah:

such a scale that it's overwhelming. You can't delete all of them. You can't block

Omar Zahzah:

every single account. And then you go and look at them and they don't even

Omar Zahzah:

seem like they're a real person. But again, there's so many of them. So I

Omar Zahzah:

was saying, you know, this is trolling as a strategy for the startup colony. To

Omar Zahzah:

what extent is it successful at the literal level of numbers? It's a little bit

Omar Zahzah:

hard to say, but it's very clear that it does take a toll and it

Omar Zahzah:

does force you expend energy in directions that take away from your ability to continue

Omar Zahzah:

to do the type of messaging that you're doing. Or even perhaps it may chip

Omar Zahzah:

away a little bit at some of the viewers who may get a little bit

Omar Zahzah:

nervous about what's happening. And we've even seen. I believe it's in this chapter that

Omar Zahzah:

I talk about, too, how the Israeli government just invested. I forget the exact number,

Omar Zahzah:

but it was, I believe, over a hundred million in its Hasbara efforts. Right. Its

Omar Zahzah:

propaganda efforts digitally, with a huge emphasis on the Internet. So it's clear that this

Omar Zahzah:

isn't going away. It's only escalating.

Omar Zahzah:

At the same time, I do think it remains to be seen just how successful those

Omar Zahzah:

efforts are really going to be, especially at this moment in time. I feel like sometimes

Omar Zahzah:

as, and I just say this as somebody who's been looking at statements over the years

Omar Zahzah:

that thinkers have made where, okay, now we've crossed the Rubicon, everybody has seen all there

Omar Zahzah:

is to be seen, there's no turning back. And yet you see that the status quo

Omar Zahzah:

kind of continues. And yet I still feel like there's just something to this moment. The

Omar Zahzah:

genocide is so blatant. The damage, the destruction, the violence, the viciousness, the sadism. It's clear

Omar Zahzah:

that there's no rationale other than complete and utter wanton destruction and obliteration of an entire

Omar Zahzah:

people. I don't really know how much getting a bunch of people to swarm a Palestinian's

Omar Zahzah:

Instagram page is going to change at this point. You can't really take away the fact

Omar Zahzah:

that so many of us have seen those images coming out of Gaza. It is important,

Omar Zahzah:

I think, to identify trolling as a strategy and also as I talk about in other

Omar Zahzah:

chapters, how it's directly practiced by sites like Canary Mission or Stop Antisemitism, these blacklist sites.

Omar Zahzah:

But is it really going to convince people that what is happening right now is not

Omar Zahzah:

a genocide? And is it really going to be able to shift public perspective back toward

Omar Zahzah:

the initial hegemonic, propagandistic view? I'm pretty doubtful of that.

Steve Grumbine:

One of the things I can assure you of just having been, you know,

Steve Grumbine:

in my own way, deep in fighting to get eyes on the situation, there

Steve Grumbine:

is a fatigue that kicks in. There is a there-is-no-hope kind of approach to

Steve Grumbine:

things, because every door is locked with a terms of service or locked with

Steve Grumbine:

a shadow ban or locked with gatekeepers. And after a little bit of time,

Steve Grumbine:

you figure you see all these college students rising up. You see all these

Steve Grumbine:

teachers rising up. And then you see teachers simultaneously getting fired, students expelled, and

Steve Grumbine:

police, militarized police in the US in particular, washing these people right out of

Steve Grumbine:

the picture and making, once again, First Amendment speech illegal because the cry bullying

Steve Grumbine:

that goes on in the Zionist project. "No, I don't feel safe." "I don't know

Steve Grumbine:

what to tell you there, man. I mean, are you the one that's killing

Steve Grumbine:

people? Are you over there pushing people in a direction that causes pain yourself?

Steve Grumbine:

Is this a little bit of you telling on yourself here, or is this

Steve Grumbine:

just a strategy?" But ultimately, the idea of silencing is real. I know when

Steve Grumbine:

we started our Facebook page, we had 125,000 followers. We had 30 million people

Steve Grumbine:

come through the door whenever we would put stuff out there, whether it was

Steve Grumbine:

live streams or whether it was posts or articles or memes, whatever. And little

Steve Grumbine:

by little, Facebook kept hitting us with terms of service violations, and they took

Steve Grumbine:

away our nonprofit status in terms of our ability to fundraise on the platform.

Steve Grumbine:

And then people just started to say, "Well, it's because, you know, you guys

Steve Grumbine:

are too..." You know, they would always come up with some reason why it

Steve Grumbine:

was our fault that we were being silenced. And that's just a microcosm of

Steve Grumbine:

a larger issue. It really is a tactic in this new connected internet phase,

Steve Grumbine:

where social media is used both as a means of collecting information on us,

Steve Grumbine:

but also as a means of trying to organize. I'm curious, as you move

Steve Grumbine:

forward, how do you see terms of service being used to weaponize against those

Steve Grumbine:

voices fighting for Palestinian liberation?

Omar Zahzah:

I think you've really hit the nail on the head because terms of service,

Omar Zahzah:

or also community standards, which is sort of an affiliated concept, a lot of

Omar Zahzah:

these platforms, all these platforms draw particular conditions under which people can use their

Omar Zahzah:

products. And these include conditions that you are not allowed to transgress. Although these

Omar Zahzah:

are ostensibly free products to use, we know that that's not really the case.

Omar Zahzah:

We know all of the data that they collect on us. We know all

Omar Zahzah:

of the things we pay for in terms of time, in terms of attention,

Omar Zahzah:

in terms of the targeted advertisements that is being served up to us and

Omar Zahzah:

the impact that can have. But, you know, ostensibly these are free platforms and

Omar Zahzah:

we are allowed to access them according to their terms as private companies by

Omar Zahzah:

meeting particular conditions which include how we engage. And so what we're seeing increasingly

Omar Zahzah:

is a growing explicitness with which these companies are applying concepts like you described

Omar Zahzah:

earlier, like the feelings of safety or the protecting people from harassment or attack,

Omar Zahzah:

to inoculate against the possibility of criticism of Zionism, a settler-colonial ideology, a political

Omar Zahzah:

ideology being entertained. So one of the things that I wrote about is Meta's

Omar Zahzah:

updated guidelines on how it will permit criticism of Zionism to occur on its

Omar Zahzah:

platforms.   Now, the ostensible terms of this are, you know, Zionism cannot be

Omar Zahzah:

used as a proxy for Jewish people. So you cannot have anti-Semitism, hatred of

Omar Zahzah:

Jews, bigotry against Jews, that's fine. But this concept is really being stretched in

Omar Zahzah:

a way to where it's patently clear, if you actually look at the literal

Omar Zahzah:

level of language, that in a lot of ways it's already accepting this false

Omar Zahzah:

conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Meta is a prominent company, prominent big tech company.

Omar Zahzah:

It's a giant. And the fact that it came out with these guidelines, one

Omar Zahzah:

of the things I write about is, I believe the phrasing is "denial of

Omar Zahzah:

right to exist." I need to look at the exact wording. But it did

Omar Zahzah:

have something against right to exist, which ultimately refers to this point about, you

Omar Zahzah:

know, Israel's so-called right to exist. And so you can't even access this platform

Omar Zahzah:

unless you tacitly agree to this rhetorical trap, this false construction that talks about

Omar Zahzah:

the right of a settler-colonial state to exist, which is bizarre. That's completely outlandish.

Omar Zahzah:

It's bizarre, but it's not totally surprising because, you know, again, we've seen Big

Omar Zahzah:

Tech as an industry increasingly lean into the normalization of Zionism and the suppression

Omar Zahzah:

of Palestinian voices. And after this happened, I also wrote about how later on

Omar Zahzah:

you had the game streaming platform Twitch also published their own policy regarding the

Omar Zahzah:

criticism of Zionism on their platform, which is, if you have the misfortune of

Omar Zahzah:

sitting down to read it, you know, I feel like I should buy you

Omar Zahzah:

some Tylenol or something because it's just so mealy mouth[ed]. It's so contradictory. But

Omar Zahzah:

ultimately what the impact of even these convoluted expressions do is to create a

Omar Zahzah:

sense of anxiety or discomfort. Okay, maybe this is a little too complicated. Maybe

Omar Zahzah:

I shouldn't be wading into it, right? So these terms of servitude or these

Omar Zahzah:

community standards, particularly when they're applied in this deceptive way that is meant to

Omar Zahzah:

gently condition us toward a particular political direction or away from a particular political

Omar Zahzah:

direction, they do have an impact on our sense of political understanding and our

Omar Zahzah:

sense of the actual political status quo. So that's why I was also interested,

Omar Zahzah:

in the book, and looking at academics who had thought about content moderation not

Omar Zahzah:

just as literal removal of posts, but also as something that has a direct

Omar Zahzah:

tie to the way that we engage in and practice discourse. You know, in

Omar Zahzah:

the so-called real world or the offline world. These things can have larger impacts

Omar Zahzah:

than just the specific usage of the platform. Even though in the specific usage

Omar Zahzah:

of the platform we're already seeing this creep of the acceptance of the relative

Omar Zahzah:

impunity of the settler-colonial state and the inability to criticize its conduct, or else

Omar Zahzah:

as Zionist rhetorical tactics practiced for years before this. You know, we're going to

Omar Zahzah:

be accused with weaponized accusations of things like harassment, even discrimination, when the irony

Omar Zahzah:

being that we are the ones calling out discrimination and oppression and racism in

Omar Zahzah:

the first place. We're having the logics of anti-racism, of protecting marginalized communities be

Omar Zahzah:

weaponized precisely to work in the service of racism and marginalization. And I will

Omar Zahzah:

just say that's, I think to me, really part of the insidiousness of the

Omar Zahzah:

Zionist project in general and how it's been able to weaponize various cultural aspects

Omar Zahzah:

of our engagement with social justice struggles. It's a tendency that has pre-dated the

Omar Zahzah:

digital sphere. And so it should, I guess, be no surprise that it has

Omar Zahzah:

now infiltrated the digital sphere so effectively. But it has done so also at

Omar Zahzah:

the discretion of corporate elites who want to protect their bottom line above all

Omar Zahzah:

else and who have made the conscious choice. This gets into my usage of

Omar Zahzah:

the term digital settler colonialism. Part of what I emphasize is that we need

Omar Zahzah:

to see this as the constant, as the explicit and direct choice of the

Omar Zahzah:

big tech oligarchs to partner with a project of settler colonialism, dispossession and genocide.

Steve Grumbine:

Each accusation is basically a confession, isn't it? I hate to bring up Orwell.

Steve Grumbine:

It's so easy and low-hanging fruit and I'm not going to use the book

Steve Grumbine:

here. I'll use the movie. When they're burning pieces of news or burning old

Steve Grumbine:

thoughts that they're trying to erase from the current narrative so that you can't

Steve Grumbine:

go back and you're destroying history. You're rewriting history. You're rewriting words. You're eliminating

Steve Grumbine:

words. And it goes back to your "Hey, you know this one Palestinian reporter

Steve Grumbine:

I was following suddenly been silent for a couple months. Wonder if he's alive

Steve Grumbine:

anymore?" And most people don't have the brain space to be able to hold

Steve Grumbine:

that. And it's just gone. It just doesn't exist anymore. And you have no

Steve Grumbine:

breadcrumb trail how to find back to where you were. And a lot of

Steve Grumbine:

just erasing. And we talked about kind of erasing the Palestinian history. I mean,

Steve Grumbine:

we've talked about it many times how the bombing of birth records, you name

Steve Grumbine:

it, has basically sought to erase the Palestinian people altogether. But I want to

Steve Grumbine:

kind of lump that concept in of erasing Palestine, which is another one of

Steve Grumbine:

your well-written chapters, to kind of go in with another component here. I want

Steve Grumbine:

to blend these two thoughts together. And that's the TikTok ban that you talk

Steve Grumbine:

about later in the book. Because I want to bring Gramsci back, that kind

Steve Grumbine:

of crisis of hegemony. He spoke very, very eloquently about the crisis of hegemony.

Steve Grumbine:

And this is kind of what happens when the hegemon feels like their power

Steve Grumbine:

over the narrative is loosening. And so what do they do? They use fascism.

Steve Grumbine:

They bring fascism's tactic. They bring fascism into the mix here. Relating the TikTok

Steve Grumbine:

ban, as you decry "US imperial anxiety here," right? That right there speaks to

Steve Grumbine:

hegemonic crisis and the crisis of hegemony. And it also some of those Orwellian

Steve Grumbine:

themes where they're basically erasing the people. They're trying to gain control of the

Steve Grumbine:

platforms. That's a lot there, but I think there's meat on the bone. What

Steve Grumbine:

are your thoughts as it pertains to that crisis of hegemony and the tactics

Steve Grumbine:

they use to play with the TikTok ban and sell it to these Zionist

Steve Grumbine:

oligarchs and so forth? I would just love to hear your insights.

Omar Zahzah:

We're in a moment where so many things are being besieged. But I also think

Omar Zahzah:

one of the fascinating things about this moment is precisely that we are kind of

Omar Zahzah:

getting a peek behind the curtain into how hegemony works, precisely because it is not

Omar Zahzah:

working in certain spaces where there had been the expectation that it would. I mean,

Omar Zahzah:

the TikTok ban really emerges within a broader context of politicians raising an uproar about

Omar Zahzah:

the fact that the youth, you know, younger people, are getting exposed to or even

Omar Zahzah:

creating content of their own that is critical of the hegemonic Zionist narrative. And they're

Omar Zahzah:

so concerned with the fact that this is happening that they're calling for bans of

Omar Zahzah:

the platform. And this directly, of course, converges with the broader US imperial competition with

Omar Zahzah:

China, which is emerging as a powerful rival. And of course, part of the terms

Omar Zahzah:

of the ban to sell to an American company, of course, that's just literally the

Omar Zahzah:

consolidation of platform capitalism, right?

Steve Grumbine:

Yes.

Omar Zahzah:

That's a different aspect of digital colonialism altogether. We need to be the hegemon digitally.

Omar Zahzah:

So I find that so fascinating, very telling. And you know, of course you had

Omar Zahzah:

things like Greenblatt from the ADL saying, "We have a TikTok problem. We need to

Omar Zahzah:

get our best minds, you know, to work countering this slew of messaging that the

Omar Zahzah:

youth are increasingly seeing and creating." So I definitely think it's a really fascinating real

Omar Zahzah:

time peek behind the curtain about how hegemony is supposed to work and what happens

Omar Zahzah:

when it starts to fail. What do you do? You resort to measures like this.

Omar Zahzah:

"We're going to ban the platform. We're going to have it sell to an American

Omar Zahzah:

company. We are going to appoint more people affiliated with the Israeli project to moderate."

Omar Zahzah:

And this is of course also part and parcel of the broader dynamic that I

Omar Zahzah:

refer to as "erasing Palestine" in the chapter that you mentioned. And what I meant

Omar Zahzah:

by that is that it's not just Palestinians and Palestinian voices and perspectives that are

Omar Zahzah:

erased. It's the very concept or the idea of something called Palestine that gives all

Omar Zahzah:

of us, all of those people, something that binds us. This idea of a homeland,

Omar Zahzah:

this idea of being engaged in an anti-colonial struggle for a homeland that eventually will

Omar Zahzah:

be liberated, part of the broader project is to erase the very existence of that

Omar Zahzah:

idea as well as to erase as many Palestinian voices, records and perspectives as possible.

Omar Zahzah:

So what I was arguing is that in the digital sphere, in the same way

Omar Zahzah:

that settler colonialism in other physical context has meant the destruction of universities, the bombing

Omar Zahzah:

of libraries, the assassination of intellectuals and scholars, all of that, the digital sphere also

Omar Zahzah:

needs to undergo a total erasure of anything related to Palestine, not just because of

Omar Zahzah:

the holding of Palestinian identity, but because of the presentation of this broader anti-colonial ideal

Omar Zahzah:

that binds an indigenous people in resistance together. The point is to expunge that completely

Omar Zahzah:

from all platforms that's the process that I was referring to as "erasing Palestine." The

Omar Zahzah:

TikTok ban, I think, is a really good example of the powers that be mobilizing

Omar Zahzah:

in real time to make sure that happens. And we're getting such an interesting view

Omar Zahzah:

into it precisely because we don't get to see behind the curtain quite as much

Omar Zahzah:

as we have now. Whenever I talk about this, I always think it's really important

Omar Zahzah:

to reaffirm that this total erasure is never really going to be possible. They can

Omar Zahzah:

ban an app. They can ban a platform. The organizers, dissenters are always going to

Omar Zahzah:

find a new means of re-appropriating a particular form of media to advance a narrative

Omar Zahzah:

of dissent. I mean, the very fact that 2021 played out in the way that

Omar Zahzah:

it did is a testament to that. And that was at a slightly different moment

Omar Zahzah:

of the broader hegemony that social media held on our cultural understanding of the world

Omar Zahzah:

around us. And now we're seeing a different kind of timbre and character to big

Omar Zahzah:

tech social media as an industry under the current administration that we have. But nevertheless,

Omar Zahzah:

Palestinians were able to do it before and to do it brilliantly and to do

Omar Zahzah:

it in such a way that it had real impact. They're continuing to do it

Omar Zahzah:

now, even in spite of all of this opposition. So erasing Palestine is never going

Omar Zahzah:

to be a complete fait accompli, even as there's going to be a lot of

Omar Zahzah:

gains in terms of the ability of the powers that be to do that. They

Omar Zahzah:

will not be able to quell resistance and the savvy, creative insurgency of Palestinians engaged

Omar Zahzah:

in narrative resistance.

Steve Grumbine:

Yeah, very well stated.  Omar, I want to lead us to the end here,

Steve Grumbine:

and I want to make a couple statements and I want to let you

Steve Grumbine:

have the last word, but one of the things that I have also been

Steve Grumbine:

focused on this podcast is the lack of real democracy in the world, quite

Steve Grumbine:

frankly. But in the US in particular, in the US being an empire, its

Steve Grumbine:

lack of democracy has a broader impact, a broader footprint on the world as

Steve Grumbine:

a whole, in that the people that live here, they may get a black

Steve Grumbine:

eye for the people that are in power. But the more you dig into

Steve Grumbine:

the US democracy, the less it looks like a democracy and the more you

Steve Grumbine:

realize that it's not a democracy at all. Gilens and Page study came out

Steve Grumbine:

back in 2014 from Princeton showed quite frankly that voter populist ideas have a

Steve Grumbine:

"near zero impact" on public policy in any way, shape or form. We can

Steve Grumbine:

see that those of us have eyes to see that are not trapped in

Steve Grumbine:

the Matrix can clearly see that we can't vote our way out of this.

Steve Grumbine:

If we could have all the students around the country protesting to end a

Steve Grumbine:

genocide or end funding of a genocide, or end the kind of censorship that

Steve Grumbine:

is occurring, it would be gone by now. But alas, that's just not happening.

Steve Grumbine:

There are powerful interests at play that dwarf and trump any other ideas or

Steve Grumbine:

hopes and aspirations. And people keep pouring themselves into what I believe is a

Steve Grumbine:

tool for manufacturing consent for manufacturing and maintaining that hegemonic control. People have convinced

Steve Grumbine:

themselves, because that's the way hegemony works, that this is their own ideas, that

Steve Grumbine:

they are the masters of their universe, failing to understand the impact of these

Steve Grumbine:

tools and these apparatus. I don't even know the right way of framing that.

Steve Grumbine:

But the tools of hegemony that keep folks in control.  How do you envision

Steve Grumbine:

real, meaningful winning of this? I mean, these are resistance without necessarily a goal

Steve Grumbine:

of victory. They're resistance because what else are you going to do? You have

Steve Grumbine:

to resist. But I'm curious, what do you think defines victory in this space?

Omar Zahzah:

Wow, that's a great question. A lot to work with there.

Steve Grumbine:

Sorry about that. It's my MO.

Omar Zahzah:

No, no, yeah, no, no worries. I think first and foremost, the ultimate real goal has

Omar Zahzah:

to be the total liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, the full right

Omar Zahzah:

of return of all Palestinians. I mean, the end of the genocide, all of that. The

Omar Zahzah:

end of the latest genocide, I should say, because, you know, the Israeli state was forged

Omar Zahzah:

and maintained through genocide. I think that needs to be thought of as the ultimate goal

Omar Zahzah:

in terms of thinking about the Palestinian struggle. As far as the broader political narrative battles,

Omar Zahzah:

I don't know if I can speak to what a total victory would look like within

Omar Zahzah:

that context, but it certainly has to mean the ability for shifts in consciousness to realize

Omar Zahzah:

meaningful consequences in terms of action. We don't just need to raise people's consciousness. We also

Omar Zahzah:

need to make sure that shift in consciousness leads to real consequences in terms of action

Omar Zahzah:

that go beyond-I don't know if I should call it the voting trap-but let's say, like

Omar Zahzah:

the kind of the voting bubble that I think you were describing, where it's just a

Omar Zahzah:

matter of, "Let's get the right people in office and then everything will be better." Because

Omar Zahzah:

we've seen time and time again that investment in Palestinian death and dispossession is very much

Omar Zahzah:

a bipartisan product. It is baked into the US imperial project, and it is therefore baked

Omar Zahzah:

into the very character of US electoral politics as we know it. The idea that we

Omar Zahzah:

simply vote in the right person and, you know, that's where we have to hang our

Omar Zahzah:

hats in terms of the ultimate outcome, I think is completely misguided for that reason. What

Omar Zahzah:

we need to do is continue to make sure that we are advancing narrative shifts and

Omar Zahzah:

also engaging in meaningful organizing and activism of all forms that shut down business as usual

Omar Zahzah:

and really force people to take account of what is happening. And that forces politicians to

Omar Zahzah:

use the power that they do have to actually dissent in meaningful ways and not just

Omar Zahzah:

give us mealy-mouthed PR statements that don't say anything while using far too many words and

Omar Zahzah:

make us feel better about ourselves. I know that's not a specific, explicit outcome in terms

Omar Zahzah:

of victory, which I think you were asking, but I definitely think that we need to

Omar Zahzah:

not lose sight of the fact that all of these shifts in consciousness that are made

Omar Zahzah:

possible and facilitated by the savvy re-appropriation of digital technologies, we need to continue to make

Omar Zahzah:

sure that they are translated into meaningful action and consequences that forces the powers that be

Omar Zahzah:

to take note and act accordingly. The only power we really have is people power. And

Omar Zahzah:

so long as we continue to surrender that to this empty hope that one politician within

Omar Zahzah:

this inherently corrupt system is going to come around and change things, I think the more

Omar Zahzah:

we continue to sell ourselves short and to shortchange the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and

Omar Zahzah:

liberation.

Steve Grumbine:

Yeah, you know, I don't want to expand this beyond the scope, but let's

Steve Grumbine:

just be fair. We all are oppressed. We all, as working people, are oppressed.

Steve Grumbine:

We all are alienated from our work, alienated from the fulfillment of all that

Steve Grumbine:

we could be as people, as cultures, as families, as communes, if you will,

Steve Grumbine:

affinity groups, et cetera, we're all oppressed. But when you see the major oppression

Steve Grumbine:

that you see the systematic erasure and the genocide occurring in various places, I

Steve Grumbine:

mean, it's happening in Africa as well. But these are all parts of colonialism,

Steve Grumbine:

imperialism, of capitalism, of hegemonic elitism, the elite capture of society. For me, I

Steve Grumbine:

just... I guess I don't know how to hit the alarm clock to wake

Steve Grumbine:

[up.] I mean, I'm sure there's many areas that my alarm clock needs to

Steve Grumbine:

still go off on. Like, I don't think anyone has a total awareness of

Steve Grumbine:

everything. They'd be some superhuman, some God, if you will. But how do we

Steve Grumbine:

make people wake up and realize that while they're partaking in these things and

Steve Grumbine:

they're enjoying these things, then in reality, even though they're one step above the

Steve Grumbine:

pig slop, they are still amongst the pig slop. You know, they are not

Steve Grumbine:

out of harm's way. I just can't express this deeply enough that just because

Steve Grumbine:

you see slaughter going on over there doesn't mean that you're not an eighth

Steve Grumbine:

of an inch away from a police state slaughtering you for different reasons. Like,

Steve Grumbine:

they came for this group first and I didn't say anything. They came for

Steve Grumbine:

this group, I didn't say anything. And then finally they came for me and

Steve Grumbine:

there was no one there to help me. How do we make people realize

Steve Grumbine:

this isn't just a Palestinian struggle, this is a struggle for all of us?

Omar Zahzah:

That's a great question. I think it ultimately comes down to understanding that the

Omar Zahzah:

US support of the Israeli project, precisely as you're saying, it's not just about

Omar Zahzah:

what happens to Palestinians in Palestine, right? If you think back to the words

Omar Zahzah:

of the great anti-colonial writer/thinker Aime Cesaire, right? He talked about the imperial boomerang.

Omar Zahzah:

The violence that you see practiced by Europe in terms of other continents across

Omar Zahzah:

the globe comes back home. And of course, in that text, discourse on colonialism,

Omar Zahzah:

Cesaire also makes clear how the endpoint of capitalism is fascism, because you have

Omar Zahzah:

this process of inherent exploitation and oppression that necessitates the exploitation of large swaths

Omar Zahzah:

of people and the incentivization of that exploitation and oppression. I think part of

Omar Zahzah:

what has to happen, and it's not just a matter of individuals doing something

Omar Zahzah:

in terms of pointing it out to other people, it's also, I think, incumbent

Omar Zahzah:

upon all of us to continue to ask ourselves, "What are the real connections

Omar Zahzah:

we can draw between what's happening to Palestinians and what is happening right here

Omar Zahzah:

at home?" And I think, as you're saying, we're all oppressed and exploited in

Omar Zahzah:

some way, of course, to differing degrees. But largely speaking, we exist in a

Omar Zahzah:

capitalist society. We exist within an inherently violent imperialist political status quo. And we

Omar Zahzah:

can think about things like one of the frameworks that organizers will often use

Omar Zahzah:

is, "Let's think about how many billions of dollars we're giving to this settler

Omar Zahzah:

colony to engage in its processes of colonization, apartheid and genocide, while, you know,

Omar Zahzah:

we struggle to make rent while we face all of this medical inequalities," so

Omar Zahzah:

on and so forth. So one aspect is to think about how do we

Omar Zahzah:

redirect some of that because... And think about the development of community empowerment as

Omar Zahzah:

opposed to the incentivization of imperial exploitation getting us to actually rally around that

Omar Zahzah:

and fight for that. But secondly, to also understand how violence against Palestinians is

Omar Zahzah:

inherently an act of violence against all of humanity, not just because it corrodes

Omar Zahzah:

the possibility of a truly collective sense of justice, but also on a very

Omar Zahzah:

practical level, because we are seeing the great damage that it wreaks upon our

Omar Zahzah:

already compromised political state of affairs. Right? I'm thinking, for example, of the deportation

Omar Zahzah:

of people for their views on Palestine. You know, the kidnapping of them by

Omar Zahzah:

the Gestapo, the re-attempted deportation of people, you know, outspoken activists for Palestinian freedom,

Omar Zahzah:

for example, Mahmoud Khalil, like all of those things are having direct impacts on

Omar Zahzah:

us, on our ability to exist with a relative measure of so-called protection of

Omar Zahzah:

speech, even as we know we've never fully had that and we don't exist

Omar Zahzah:

in a just system or full democracy as propaganda is, want to have us

Omar Zahzah:

believe we're seeing even more of a crackdown at this moment than what we

Omar Zahzah:

have seen periodically throughout history happen. So I think one way is also to

Omar Zahzah:

think about how the unjust and inherent violence that is inflicted upon Palestinians by

Omar Zahzah:

Israel, the toll that takes to maintain in order to continue to ensure the

Omar Zahzah:

US's hegemony at all costs, is inherently something that is going to continue to

Omar Zahzah:

have devastating impacts upon all of us. And so we need to challenge the

Omar Zahzah:

Israeli project for first and foremost what it is doing to Palestinians. But we

Omar Zahzah:

also need to understand that there is no bottom to what the defense of

Omar Zahzah:

settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide will resort to in order to defend itself. And

Omar Zahzah:

the complete aiding and abetting of this settler colony that has become really the

Omar Zahzah:

core of US electoral politics and politics as we know it. We're seeing the

Omar Zahzah:

extremes that desperation can lead to. We need to fight back because if we

Omar Zahzah:

don't really, in many ways all of us are going to be implicated in

Omar Zahzah:

the aftermath that will necessarily entail the increasing corrosion of rights and freedoms. So

Omar Zahzah:

it really is something we need to fight back on.

Steve Grumbine:

That's wonderful. And on that happy note, believe me, that was fantastic and

Steve Grumbine:

well stated. I'm going to go ahead and close this out, folks. The

Steve Grumbine:

book we're talking about today is Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and

Steve Grumbine:

Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle by Omar Zahzah, my guest.

Steve Grumbine:

Omar. Where can we find more of your work?

Omar Zahzah:

So I would say I have accounts on the usual social media platforms. I'm on

Omar Zahzah:

X, Dr. Omar Zahzah. I'm on Facebook and Instagram. Omar Zahzah. I have a Bluesky

Omar Zahzah:

account. I believe it's also Dr. Omar Zahzah. Haven't really gotten it up and running

Omar Zahzah:

very much yet I mostly use these outlets to more so to find information and

Omar Zahzah:

consume news, you know as much as they will allow news at times. So I

Omar Zahzah:

would say really the best place to keep a lookout for my work is to

Omar Zahzah:

go to sites like the Electronic Intifada or Mondoweiss or Palestine Chronicle where my new writing usually

Omar Zahzah:

appears. And of course to follow if you don't already Project Censored, where I will

Omar Zahzah:

occasionally also have new media appear from.

Steve Grumbine:

Fantastic. All right, my name is Steve Grumbine. I am the host of

Steve Grumbine:

Macro N Cheese and the founder of the nonprofit Real Progressives which sponsors

Steve Grumbine:

this podcast. We are a 501[c]3 not for profit organization and we live

Steve Grumbine:

and die on your contributions. If you feel the work that we're doing

Steve Grumbine:

is worth your time and you feel it deserves to be supported, we

Steve Grumbine:

welcome your support. You can find us at patreon.com/real progressives. You can go

Steve Grumbine:

on Substack and follow us on Substack, which is substack.com/realprogressives. You can donate

Steve Grumbine:

to us there as well. Plus you can go to our website realprogressives.org,

Steve Grumbine:

go to the dropdown menu for donate and become a monthly donor there

Steve Grumbine:

as well. There's no amount too small, no amount too great, and quite

Steve Grumbine:

frankly it is tax deductible. So this time of the year, people looking

Steve Grumbine:

for tax deductions, we're happy to take advantage of that. If you're interested

Steve Grumbine:

in supporting us, we welcome your support. So on behalf of my guest

Steve Grumbine:

Omar Zahzah, myself Steve Grumbine, on behalf of the podcast Macro N Cheese,

Steve Grumbine:

we are outta here.

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About the Podcast

Macro N Cheese
The MMT podcast for the people!
A podcast that critically examines the working-class struggle through the lens of MMT or Modern Monetary Theory. Host Steve Grumbine, founder of Real Progressives, provides incisive political commentary and showcases grassroots activism. Join us for a robust, unfiltered exploration of economic issues that impact the working class, as we challenge the status quo and prioritize collective well-being over profit. This is comfort food for the mind, fueling our fight for justice and equity!
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Steven Grumbine

Steve is a lot more than just the host of Macro N Cheese, he's the founder and CEO of two nonprofits and the “less is more" project manager! He uses his extensive knowledge of project management, macroeconomics and history to help listeners gain a vision of what our future could look like.