Friday, May 10, 2024

U.S. State Department Diplomat and Arabic Language spokesperson Hala Rharrit On Resigning in Protest of Israel's War On Gaza and the American Government's Support of and Complicity in the Genocide Taking Place There

 “I voiced concern repeatedly, I was silenced”: ex US diplomat on Gaza | UpFront

Can dissent within the US government have an impact? UpFront talks to a recent State Department resignee, Hala Rharrit. This week, Israel took hold of the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza, a move that has stoked fears of further death and devastation in the territory. US President Joe Biden had previously warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an invasion of Rafah was a “red line”. The Israeli move has come as the death toll in Israel’s war on Gaza continues to mount in a war that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Biden administration faces growing internal dissent against its policies in the Middle East, most recently marked by the resignation of US Department of State Arabic language spokesperson, Hala Rharrit. Rharrit is the first career diplomat to resign publicly, protesting the government’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza. So what effect is dissent having on US foreign policy? And is the Biden administration at a tipping point in its support of Israel’s war on Gaza? 
 
This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks to Hala Rharrit about dissent within the Biden administration and the government’s foreign policy.
 
VIDEO:
 
 

 

Journalists, Historians, and Activists Raz Segal, Medhi Hasan and Palestinian Attorney Diana Buttu On the Vile Genocidal Attack on the City of Rafah in Gaza and What It Means

'This is a Society Awash with War Criminals': Mehdi's Panel of Experts on Israel and Rafah

May 7, 2024

The Israeli military has officially begun to move into the southern Gazan city of Rafah, sending in tanks and taking control of the border crossing with Egypt. The looming full-scale invasion has already been called a “humanitarian nightmare” by the UN secretary-general. In response to these escalations, Mehdi hosted a town hall for Zeteo paid subscribers with Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal and Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu. Segal, who has previously called Israel’s war on Gaza a “textbook case of genocide,” explained to Mehdi why Israel’s assault on Gaza, and America’s support for it, is about so much more than those in power will ever admit. Zeteo contributor Diana Buttu reminded viewers that Israel’s latest escalations in Rafah are, unfortunately, no surprise, stating that the invasion is what “Netanyahu always wanted.”
 
Founded by Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo has a strong bias for the truth and an unwavering belief in the media’s responsibility to the public. Unfiltered news, bold opinions. For more content from Zeteo, subscribe now www.zeteo.com.
 
VIDEO:  
 

 
 

U.N. General Assembly Adopts Resolution Supporting Palestinian Statehood--U.S. Votes NO While Genocidal War Rages On In Rafah


Live Updated
May 10, 2024
1:00 p.m.


Middle East Crisis: 
 
U.N. General Assembly Adopts Resolution Supporting Palestinian Statehood--U.S. Votes NO
 
 



A United Nations General Assembly vote to declare that Palestinians qualify for full-member status was approved, 143 to 9, with 25 nations abstaining. Credit: Sarah Yenesel/EPA, via Shutterstock

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution declaring that Palestinians qualify for full-member status at the United Nations, a highly symbolic move that reflects growing global solidarity with Palestinians and is a rebuke to Israel and the United States.

The resolution was approved by a vote of 143 to 9 with 25 nations abstaining. The Assembly broke into a big applause after the vote. The United States voted no.

The resolution was prepared by the United Arab Emirates, the current chair of the U.N. Arab Group. The 193-member General Assembly took on the issue of Palestinian membership after the United States in April vetoed a resolution before the Security Council to recognize full membership for a Palestinian state. The majority of Council members supported the move, but the United States said recognition of Palestinian statehood should be achieved through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Anger and frustration at the United States has been brewing for months among many senior U.N. officials and diplomats, including allies such as France, because Washington has repeatedly blocked cease-fire resolutions at the Security Council and has staunchly supported Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, even as humanitarian suffering has mounted.

“The U.S. is resigned to having another bad day at the U.N.,” said Richard Gowan, an expert on the United Nations for the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization. But he added that the resolution “gives the Palestinians a boost without creating a breakdown over whether they are or are not now U.N. members.”

The U.N. charter stipulates that the General Assembly can only grant full membership to a nation-state after the approval of the Security Council. Examples of that include the creation of the states of Israel and South Sudan. The resolution adopted on Friday explicitly states that the Palestinian issue is an exception and will not set precedent, language that was added during negotiations on the text when some countries expressed concern that Taiwan and Kosovo might follow a similar path to pursue statehood, diplomats said.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., told the Assembly ahead of the vote that Palestinians’ right to full membership at the U.N. and statehood “are not up for negotiations, they are our inherent rights as Palestinians.” He added that a vote against Palestinian statehood was a vote against the two-state solution.

Still, the resolution does provide new diplomatic perks to Palestinians. Palestinians can now sit among member states in alphabetical order; they can speak at General Assembly meetings on any topic instead of being limited to Palestinian affairs; they can submit proposals and amendments; and they can participate at U.N. conferences and international meetings organized by the Assembly and other United Nations entities.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, a sharp critic of the body, said voting for a Palestinian state would be inviting “a state of terror” in its midst and rewarding “terrorists” who killed Jewish civilians with privileges and called member states endorsing it “Jew haters.”

The resolution says that it “determines the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations,” under its charter rules and recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter with a favorable outcome.

Nate Evans, the spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said that if the Assembly refers the issue back to the Council, it would have the same outcome again, with the U.S. blocking the move.

The Palestinians are currently recognized by the United Nations as a nonmember observer state, a status granted in 2012 by the General Assembly. They do not have the right to vote on General Assembly resolutions or nominate any candidates to U.N. agencies.

The Assembly session was not without moments of performative drama.

Mr. Gilad. Israel’s ambassador, held up the picture of Hamas’s military leader, Yahya Sinwar, considered the architect of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, with the word “President,” and then a transparent shredder, inserting a piece of paper inside it, and said the member states were “shredding the U.N. charter.”

Mr. Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador, at the end of his speech raised his fist in the air, visibly choking back tears, and said, “Free Palestine.” The Assembly broke into applause.

Farnaz Fassihi
More than 100,000 have fled Rafah, the U.N. says, as Israeli bombardment intensifies.



Palestinians leaving Rafah on Wednesday following an evacuation order issued by the Israeli Army. Credit: Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

With fears rising that Israel will move ahead with a long-planned full-scale invasion of Rafah, the United Nations said Friday that more than 100,000 people had fled since Israel ordered people to leave parts of the city and intensified a bombardment that Gazan health officials say has killed dozens of people.

As Israeli troops continued to exchange fire with Palestinian fighters near Rafah on Friday, according to both the Israeli military and Hamas, people were packing up their tents and leaving the southern Gazan city and its surrounding areas where more than a million Palestinians had sought shelter in trucks, cars and donkey carts.

Many of them have already been displaced multiple times by the Israel’s war in Gaza over the past seven months.

“Around 110,000 people have now fled Rafah looking for safety,” the main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, known as UNRWA, posted online on Friday. “But nowhere is safe in the #GazaStrip & living conditions are atrocious.” On Thursday, a U.N. official said that 79,000 people had left since Israel issued its evacuation order.

“The only hope is an immediate #Ceasefire,” UNRWA said.

Israel seized control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in what it called a “limited operation,” and intense fighting has continued on the eastern edge of the city since. The Israeli military said on Friday that its aircraft had struck Hamas members and rocket-launching sites at several locations in the Rafah area over the past day, while Hamas said its forces had fired mortars on Israeli troops east of the city.

The Israeli security cabinet agreed on Thursday night to expand the operation in Rafah, two officials said, but it was not clear what that would mean in practical terms.

Fighting continues in other areas of Gaza, and on Friday, the Israeli military said four of its soldiers were killed and two were seriously injured by an explosive device near Gaza City, in the northern part of the territory. Israeli forces seized the north months ago but have been unable to control it completely, repeatedly battling militants there.

In an apparent sign of the militants’ staying power, Hamas took responsibility for a rocket attack, the first one since December that was launched from Gaza and triggered air-raid sirens in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.

Israel has designated what it calls a safe zone for Gazans fleeing Rafah, including Al-Mawasi, a coastal section of Gaza it has advised people to go to for months. But the United Nations has said it is neither safe nor equipped to receive them.

On Friday, UNICEF’s senior emergency coordinator in the Gaza Strip, Hamish Young, said from Rafah that in his 30 years working on large-scale humanitarian emergencies “I’ve never been involved in a situation as devastating, complex or erratic as this.”

“Yesterday, I walked around Al-Mawasi,” Mr. Young said. ”The roads to Mawasi are jammed — many hundreds of trucks, buses, cars and donkey carts loaded with people and possessions.”

“People I speak with tell me they are exhausted, terrified and know life in Al-Mawasi will, again, impossibly, be harder,” he said. “Families lack proper sanitation facilities, drinking water and shelter.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

Raja Abdulrahim and Bilal Shbair
People leaving Rafah describe yet another fearful flight from Israeli assaults.


Palestinians fleeing Rafah on Thursday. 
Credit: Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Manal al-Wakeel and her extended family of 30 people thought they were going home.

Displaced from their home in Gaza City months ago, Ms. al-Wakeel and relatives began packing their bags on Monday and preparing to dismantle their tent in Rafah, at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas had announced that it had accepted a cease-fire proposal from Qatar and Egypt, leaving many Gazans thinking that a truce was imminent. Their joy was short-lived; it soon became clear that Hamas was not talking about the same proposal endorsed days earlier by Israel, which said the two sides remained far apart.

Instead, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets in eastern Rafah telling people to flee and move to what Israel called a humanitarian zone to the north, as the Israeli military bombarded the area. Gazan health officials say that dozens have been killed since Israel’s incursion into parts of Rafah this week.

“We thought that day a cease-fire was possible,” said Ms. al-Wakeel, 48, who helped the aid group World Central Kitchen prepare hot meals.

She and her family had been sheltering near the Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, in an area battered by Israeli airstrikes and ground combat. The director of the hospital, Dr. Marwan al-Hams, said on Monday that it had received the bodies of 26 people killed by Israeli fire, and treated 50 who were wounded. The hospital was evacuated the next day.

So rather than return home, on Tuesday night Ms. al-Wakeel, her husband, her 11 children and other relatives found a semi-truck that would take them and their belongings, including suitcases of clothes, pots and pans and tents, for 2,500 shekels — about $670 — in search of another place to stay.

They left Rafah around midnight and made their way north along with hundreds of tuk-tuks, trucks, cars and donkey-carts full of other displaced families and their possessions.

“It was a scary night, the truck was moving slowly because of the heavy load on it,” she said.

Once out of Rafah, they made frequent stops at schools and other buildings, desperately looking for any empty place for them to shelter. But every place was full.

Others couldn’t find a place, either, and Ms. al-Wakeel saw many people sleeping by the side of the road next to whatever belongings they had fled with.

At a U.N. school in Deir El-Balah, a young man suggested they stay in an empty concrete building — with no windows or doors — that belonged to the Hamas-led government’s ministry of social development.

“It looked like a dangerous place,” she said, adding that they had been told that a woman and her daughter had previously been killed in one of the building’s rooms by an Israeli missile.

But they were too afraid to continue roaming around in the darkness, and decided to spend the night there and look for a safer place come morning.

“I feel so sad and disappointed for what happened to Rafah as it was stable for us there,” she said. “We have spent so much time having to arrange new places for ourselves again and we feel depressed and so exhausted from repeating the same suffering.”

Saeda al-Nemnem, 42, had given birth to twins less than a month before Israel dropped the leaflets over where they were sheltering in Rafah, ordering them to leave. Her family, also displaced from Gaza City, dispatched a relative to look for a truck that could ferry them north, despite the intense Israeli airstrikes at the time.

The relative, Mohammed al-Jojo, was killed by an Israeli strike on the tractor he was riding, she said.

He “was killed when he was getting us out of that area to a safer place,” she said. “I feel I caused his death.”

Despite the dangers in getting on the road, staying where they were in Rafah was no safer.

Along the terrifying journey to the city of Khan Younis, where she and her family of eight found shelter in a room attached to Al Aqsa University’s main building, they could hear what seemed like explosions from Israeli bombs, missiles and artillery, she said.

“My children’s heartbeats were so high that I could feel them,” she said. It was the heaviest bombardment she had ever heard, she said, “so close and so terrifying for me and my children.”

Raja Abdulrahim and Bilal Shbair Reporting from Jerusalem and from Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip
U.N. officials warn that aid efforts face imminent threat from lack of fuel.



An employee with fuel tanks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Friday.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

After five days without fuel deliveries to Gaza, United Nations officials said on Friday that large parts of the international aid mission faced imminent closure, deepening the humanitarian emergency as levels of malnutrition and disease mount.

“Humanitarian operations cannot run without fuel,” Georgios Petropoulos, head of the U.N. aid office in the southern city of Rafah, said. The U.N.’s humanitarian activities, particularly food and health care aid, would halt “within the next two days” unless solutions were found quickly to allow deliveries of fuel and other supplies into Gaza, he said.

Raising fears of a full invasion of Rafah, Israel this week seized the Gaza side of the crossing with Egypt in what it described as a limited operation. The United Nations said that no aid is reaching Gaza through the south.

Only a trickle of aid is entering through a border crossing point at the northern end of the Gaza Strip, in Erez, and that cannot reach the south and is inadequate given the scale of need, Mr. Petropoulos said in a video news briefing from Gaza.

The U.N. food agency and UNRWA, the main aid agency for Palestinians, will run out of food for distribution in southern Gaza on Saturday, Mr. Petropoulos said.

Five hospitals, five field hospitals, 10 mobile clinics treating war injuries and malnutrition, and nearly 30 ambulances will stop operating “in the next day or so,” because of a lack of fuel, he said.

Eight of 12 bakeries in southern Gaza have already halted operations for lack of fuel and stock, he added, and the remaining four are expected to stop working by Monday.

“In a matter of days, if this is not corrected, the lack of fuel will really grind the whole humanitarian operation to a halt,” said Hamish Young, the U.N. children’s agency emergency coordinator in Gaza.

Nick Cumming-Bruce reporting from Geneva
UNRWA says it closed its headquarters in East Jerusalem after attacks and a fire.




A demonstration outside the UNRWA offices in the West Bank in March.Credit...Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, known as UNRWA, said on Thursday that it would temporarily close its headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem for the safety of its staff after parts of the compound were set on fire following weeks of attacks.

“This evening, Israeli residents set fire twice to the perimeter of the UNRWA Headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem,” said the leader of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, on social media.

The fire caused extensive damage to the outdoor areas of the compound, Mr. Lazzarini said, but there were no injuries to workers there from UNRWA or other U.N. agencies. He added that some of the workers “had to put out the fire themselves as it took the Israeli fire extinguishers and police a while before they turned up.”

On Friday, Israeli police said in a statement that an investigation was started on “suspicion of a brush fire ignition” next to the UNRWA facility and that preliminary findings suggested it was started by minors and was therefore not subject to criminal prosecution. It offered no further details, but said the investigation was still going on.

The attack put the lives of U.N. staff at “serious risk” and comes two days after protesters threw stones at staff members at the compound, Mr. Lazzarini said.

Protests by Israeli settlers calling for UNRWA’s closure have been continuing for months. “On several occasions, Israeli extremists threatened our staff with guns,” Mr. Lazzarini said in Thursday’s social media post, adding that under international law, it is Israel’s responsibility “as an occupying power to ensure that United Nations personnel and facilities are protected at all times.”

Many Israeli officials have called for years for UNRWA to be dismantled, and the agency lost funding from some donor countries earlier this year after Israel accused a dozen of its employees of being involved in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7. An independent review commissioned by the U.N. and released in April found that Israel had not provided any evidence to support its further accusations that many UNRWA staff members are members of terrorist organizations.

Anushka Patil
An American aid ship heads toward Gaza, but the system for unloading it still isn’t in place.




The container ship Sagamore, right, docked in Cyprus on Wednesday. Credit: Petros Karadjias/Associated Press

An American vessel carrying aid intended for Gaza has departed from Cyprus, the Pentagon said on Thursday, but a temporary floating pier constructed by the U.S. military is not in place to unload the food and supplies meant for the enclave.

Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said in a news briefing on Thursday afternoon that while the construction of the floating pier and the causeway has been completed, weather conditions have made it unsafe to actually place them off the coast of Gaza.

General Ryder said that the aid on the vessel, called Sagamore, eventually would be loaded onto another American motor vessel docked at Ashdod, the Roy P. Benavidez. That second vessel would take the aid to the floating pier system as soon as it is installed off the coast in northern Gaza, he said, allowing it to be delivered to the enclave.

Sagamore appeared to be anchored at the Israeli port of Ashdod by late Thursday evening, according to VesselFinder, a ship tracking website. For now, the aid for Palestinians, desperately needed, is roughly 20 miles from the nearest Gazan border crossing.

“While I’m not going to provide a specific date, we expect these temporary piers to be put into position in the very near future, pending suitable security and weather conditions,” General Ryder said.

Israel has prevented the construction of Gaza’s own international seaport, prompting the United States and another aid group, the World Central Kitchen, to create their own systems for getting aid into the enclave by sea.

But aid groups and experts have frequently criticized the maritime efforts as costly and complicated ways to deliver aid, citing trucking as a more efficient way to get food inside Gaza. After Israeli strikes killed seven World Central Kitchen workers, the group paused its maritime operations there. The food charity has since said it would restart operations in Gaza with the help of Palestinian aid workers.

More food is needed in Gaza. The director of the World Food Program, Cindy McCain, said recently that some areas are already experiencing a famine.

IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS:

Any Day Now: Toward a Black Aesthetic
by Larry Neal
‎David Zwirner Books, 2024

[Publication date:  March 12, 2024] 


A comprehensive and inspiring collection of essays by Larry Neal, a founder of the seminal Black Arts Movement

“The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community. Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America.”
—Larry Neal, The Drama Review, 1968

Larry Neal, a poet, dramatist, and critic, was a founding figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s in New York. Writing as the arts editor for Liberator magazine, a radical journal published in Harlem, Neal called for Black artists to produce work that was politically oriented, rooted in the Black experience, and written for the Black community. Engaging with fiction, music, drama, and poetry in his texts, he challenged the dominance of the Western art-historical canon and charged Black artists and writers with reshaping artistic traditions according to their own history. As he proclaimed in his essay “The Black Writer’s Role,” written in 1966, “Black writers must listen to the world with their whole selves––their entire bodies. Must make literature move people. Must want to make our people feel, the way our music makes them feel.”

The writer Allie Biswas, who selected the texts Neal wrote from 1964 to 1978 included here, introduces the volume, illuminating the rich and varied context in which he produced his work.
 

REVIEW:

 

“Neal wrote extensively about the chasm between art and the Black experience, inviting artists to produce politically charged works that are anchored in Black history and oriented toward the Black community” ― Widewalls
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 

Cultural critic and playwright Larry Neal (1937–1981) was a leading member of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. He was born in Atlanta and grew up in Philadelphia, earning a BA in English and history from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He also studied folklore as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, after which he served as the arts editor for Liberator, where he published many of his essays about art. His collections of poetry, Black Boogaloo: Notes on a Black Literature (1969) and Hoodoo Hollerin Bebop Ghosts (1971), show the influence of vernacular speech and folklore.
 
 
ABOUT THE EDITOR:


Allie Biswas is a writer and editor based in London. In 2021, she coedited
The Soul of a Nation Reader: Writings by and about Black American Artists, 1960–1980, a compendium of rarely seen historical texts that address the role of art during the civil rights movement. She has published interviews with artists including Theaster Gates, Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, Meleko Mokgosi, Zanele Muholi, Adam Pendleton, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Her essays have appeared in books on Serge Alain Nitegeka, Reginald Sylvester II and Woody De Othello, amongst other artists. Most recently, she has contributed texts to Portia Zvavahera (David Zwirner Books, 2023), Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine, Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art, and Frank Bowling: Sculpture. She is currently editing a monograph about the artist Hew Locke.
 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/larry-neal


Larry Neal
1937–1981
 

Cultural critic and playwright Larry Neal was a leading member of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. He was born in Atlanta in 1937 and grew up in Philadelphia, earning a BA in English and history from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He also studied folklore as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. His collections of poetry, Black Boogaloo: Notes on a Black Literature (1969) and Hoodoo Hollerin Bebop Ghosts (1971), show the influence of vernacular speech and folklore.

Politically active and involved in the arts, Neal wrote essays about the Black Arts Movement and served as arts editor for the journal Liberator. With Amiri Baraka, he edited the anthology Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (1968). Neal was education director of the Black Panther Party, was a member of the Revolutionary Action Movement, and belonged to the Black Arts Theatre. In 1970, he was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship for African American critical studies.

Neal held teaching positions at the City College of New York, Yale University, and Wesleyan University. In the 1970s, he was executive director of the Commission on the Arts and Humanities in Washington, DC. Neal’s work is available in Vision of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings (1989), a compilation of his essays, poetry, and drama. He died in 1981. 

 
 
Illiberal America: A History
by Steven Hahn
‎W. W. Norton & Company, 2024


[Publication date: March 19, 2024]
 
If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again: in Illiberal America, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep-seated in the American past as the founding ideals.

A storm of illiberalism, building in the United States for years, unleashed its destructive force in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. The attack on American democracy and images of mob violence led many to recoil, thinking “That’s not us.” But now we must think again, for Steven Hahn shows in his startling new history that illiberalism has deep roots in our past. To those who believe that the ideals announced in the Declaration of Independence set us apart as a nation, Hahn shows that Americans have long been animated by competing values, equally deep-seated, in which the illiberal will of the community overrides individual rights, and often protects itself by excluding perceived threats, whether on grounds of race, religion, gender, economic status, or ideology.

Driven by popular movements and implemented through courts and legislation, illiberalism is part of the American bedrock. The United States was born a republic of loosely connected states and localities that demanded control of their domestic institutions, including slavery. As white settlement expanded west and immigration exploded in eastern cities, the democracy of the 1830s fueled expulsions of Blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and abolitionists. After the Civil War, southern states denied new constitutional guarantees of civil rights and enforced racial exclusions in everyday life. Illiberalism was modernized during the Progressive movement through advocates of eugenics who aimed to reduce the numbers of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the poor. The turmoil of the 1960s enabled George Wallace to tap local fears of unrest and build support outside the South, a politics adopted by Richard Nixon in 1968. Today, with illiberalism shaping elections and policy debates over guns, education, and abortion, it is urgent to understand its long history, and how that history bears on the present crisis.

8 pages of illustrations
 

REVIEWS:


"[Hahn’s] book makes an important case for vigilance in the face of extremism and warns against telling the history of the United States as one of inevitable progress."
--David Leonhardt, New York Times Book Review

"Hahn’s endeavor, undertaken with remarkable subtlety, breadth of historical detail and electrifying prose, is not so much to critique the failings of liberalism, as many historians (and activists) have profitably done, but to displace and diminish liberalism’s despotic status in our historical imagination."
Sam Adler-Bell, Washington Post

"Hahn’s achievement is connecting this sort of dimly remembered revanchism to more infamous episodes―Jim Crow, McCarthyism, South Boston’s violent revolt against school integration―and revealing a larger and more influential illiberalism than our popular history has allowed."
David Scharfenberg, Boston Globe

"Steven Hahn has written the
definitive history of the illiberalism that informs our 'troubles.' Read this book carefully. Understand what we are up against and find the resources in our traditions to fight for the America we want. An indispensable book for these dark days!"
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again

"An instant classic.… Steven Hahn transforms our understanding of the multiple traditions embedded in the American past, including a deeply rooted disdain for the ideals of democracy and equality. If you want to understand the historical origins of our present condition, this is the place to start."
Eric Foner, author of The Second Founding

"Steven Hahn takes full measure of this nation’s entrenched histories of exclusion, inequality, and violence. This is an outstanding book, essential for understanding our own moment."
Kate Masur, author of Until Justice Be Done

"In a tour de force, Steven Hahn makes a very powerful argument that illiberalism―and not conservatism, much less fascism―is the best way to think of this country’s long history of opposition to political equality. In the glut of books hoping to make sense of the current crisis, Hahn’s
Illiberal America stands out as the most nuanced, elegant, and convincing."
Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth

"Brilliant and timely.… Steven Hahn reveals the pervasive entanglement of liberal visions and illiberal restraints throughout American history. No recent invention or fundamental heresy, illiberalism has been as American as cherry pie."
Alan Taylor, author of American Civil Wars

"Steven Hahn’s
Illiberal America is a brilliantly conceived reframing of our national past and how it has shaped the present. Hahn’s prodigious research and insightful analysis illustrate how illiberalism has always been a powerful, sometimes even central, feature of American society. In so doing, he allows us to imagine a history beyond American exceptionalism. Essential reading."
Peniel E. Joseph, author of The Sword and the Shield

"Clear-eyed and beautifully written…a remarkable reinterpretation of the country’s past."
Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Fear City

"Steven Hahn persuasively dismantles the idea that the recent and terrifying threats to liberal democracy represent an alarming departure from the American tradition. Instead, this revelatory book reminds us, such threats have been a constant, recurring theme―and knowing that should make us more optimistic that we can overcome them once again."
Nicholas Lemann, author of Transaction Man

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian who studies American political and social movements. His acclaimed works include A Nation Under Our Feet and A Nation Without Borders. He teaches at New York University and lives in New York City and Southold, on Long Island.
 
 

"Gaza-based journalist Akram al-Satarri writing about Israel tightening restrictions on humanitarian aid, refusing a ceasefire deal and planning to invade the city where over a million Palestinians are sheltering": This Is What Is Happening in the Rafah Region of Gaza At This Very Moment As the Israeli Military Brutally Attacks the Palestinian Population There

Report from Rafah: Israel Seizes Border Crossing, Blocking Humanitarian Aid

 
Support our work: 

 

Journalists, Media Activists, and Public Intellectuals Mehdi Hasan and Owen Jones On The Nefarious Role of Joe Biden in Funding and Directly Enabling the Genocide in Gaza by Israel and Its Historical Implications As Represented by the Progressive Politics of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 To 2024 and Beyond

Is Biden the ‘White Moderate’ that MLK Warned Us About? | Mehdi Hasan and Owen Jones
 

Zeteo


May 4, 2024

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiEDcbvyAWk



00:00 - Intro
00:33 -MLK on the 'white moderate’
1:54 -Joe Biden denounces campus protests
12:20 -Latest on Gaza and potential Rafah invasion
23:20 -UK elections


Owen and Mehdi discuss the ongoing misrepresentation of college protests in the mainstream media, the debate over genocide in Gaza, and the London mayoral elections. They discuss how college and antiwar protests have long been demonized to undermine public support for them, and how the term "genocide" is deliberately and conveniently mis-defined by supporters of Israel. Plus, Mehdi takes us back in time to read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 's letter from a Birmingham jail about the “white moderate,” and reflects on its relevance to modern-day politicians, particularly in light of recent comments made by President Joe Biden. Owen criticizes Biden's approach on all this, accusing him of fetishizing past struggles while vilifying current protests. They also touch on the London mayoral elections and the challenges faced by Sadiq Khan, particularly in the context of his stance on issues like Gaza and Islamophobia. ‘Two Outspoken’ is a twice-monthly conversation between broadcaster, author, and Zeteo Editor-in-Chief Mehdi Hasan and political commentator, author, and activist Owen Jones.

Mehdi and Owen will be discussing the news of the week, offering their analysis on the state of American and British politics, and even, from time to time, taking questions from Zeteo subscribers.

Founded by Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo has a strong bias for the truth and an unwavering belief in the media’s responsibility to the public. Unfiltered news, bold opinions. For more content from Zeteo, subscribe now www.zeteo.com.